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Saade Val Mukhda Mod | ਸਾਡੇ ਵੱਲ ਮੁਖੜਾ ਮੋੜ — Bulleh Shah Kafi | Lyrics & Meaning

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by

Nandita Ashok
in

Saade Val Mukhda Mod | ਸਾਡੇ ਵੱਲ ਮੁਖੜਾ ਮੋੜ — Bulleh Shah Kafi | Lyrics & Meaning

About This Song

ਸਾਡੇ ਵੱਲ ਮੁਖੜਾ ਮੋੜ ਵੇ ਪਿਆਰਿਆ. Turn your face towards me, beloved. That is the whole request, repeated until it becomes the shape of the song — and Bulleh Shah never asks for anything more than this. Not rescue, not explanation. Only that the Beloved turn and look.

What makes the kafi extraordinary is the accusation folded inside the plea. You set the hooks yourself, and you yourself pull the line. The one who caused the longing is the one being asked to end it. Bulleh Shah sees no contradiction there — that is simply what it is to love God — and the song moves from that recognition, through the forced palanquin of the Heer story, to a final line that quietly refuses death altogether.

Lyrics — ਸਾਡੇ ਵੱਲ ਮੁਖੜਾ ਮੋੜ

ਸਾਡੇ ਵੱਲ ਮੁਖੜਾ ਮੋੜ ਵੇ ਪਿਆਰਿਆ,
ਸਾਡੇ ਵੱਲ ਮੁਖੜਾ ਮੋੜ ॥

ਆਪੇ ਲਾਈਆਂ ਕੁੰਡੀਆਂ ਤੈਂ,
ਤੇ ਆਪੇ ਖਿੱਚਦਾ ਹੈਂ ਡੋਰ ॥

ਅਰਸ਼ ਕੁਰਸੀ ਤੇ ਬਾਂਗਾਂ ਮਿਲੀਆਂ,
ਮੱਕੇ ਪੈ ਗਿਆ ਸ਼ੋਰ ॥

ਡੋਲੀ ਪਾ ਕੇ ਲੈ ਚੱਲੇ ਖੇੜੇ,
ਨਾ ਕੁਝ ਉਜ਼ਰ ਨਾ ਜ਼ੋਰ ॥

ਜੇ ਮਾਏ ਤੈਨੂੰ ਖੇੜੇ ਪਿਆਰੇ,
ਡੋਲੀ ਪਾ ਦੇਵੀਂ ਹੋਰ ॥

ਬੁੱਲ੍ਹਾ ਸ਼ੌਹ ਅਸਾਂ ਮਰਨਾ ਨਾਹੀਂ,
ਵੇ ਮਰ ਗਿਆ ਕੋਈ ਹੋਰ ॥

The ਟੇਕ returns after each line, the way the kafi is traditionally sung.

देवनागरी में — Lyrics in Devanagari

साडे वल्ल मुखड़ा मोड़ वे प्यारिआ,
साडे वल्ल मुखड़ा मोड़ ॥

आपे लाईआं कुंडियां तैं,
ते आपे खिच्चदा हैं डोर ॥

अरश कुरसी ते बांगां मिलियां,
मक्के पै गया शोर ॥

डोली पा के लै चल्ले खेड़े,
ना कुझ उज़र ना ज़ोर ॥

जे माए तैनूँ खेड़े प्यारे,
डोली पा देवीं होर ॥

बुल्ल्हा शौह असाँ मरना नाहीं,
वे मर गया कोई होर ॥

Meaning of the Lyrics

The refrain. Turn your face towards me, O beloved. Turn your face this way.

First line. You yourself set the hooks in me — and now you yourself are pulling the line.

Second line. The calls to prayer rose to the highest heaven and met there; an uproar broke out in Mecca.

Third line. The Kheras have put me in the palanquin and are carrying me away — and there is neither excuse to offer nor strength to resist.

Fourth line. Mother, if the Kheras are so dear to you, then send someone else in that palanquin.

The signature line. Bulleha — my Lord, I shall not die. It is someone else who has died.

The opening complaint is the theological centre. Hooks and line are a fisherman’s image: the Beloved baits the hook, sets it, and then draws the line in. Bulleh Shah is pointing out that the pain of longing and the cure for it come from the same hand. He does not resolve this. He simply says it, and then asks anyway — which is more honest than any resolution would be.

And then the last line, which turns the whole kafi over. I shall not die — someone else has died. The self that could be married off, carried away, and buried was never the real one. What dies is the constructed person, the one with a family and a caste and a name; what remains was never available to the palanquin in the first place. It is Bulleh Shah’s constant claim, stated here in nine words with no argument attached.

History & Devotion

Bulleh Shah (c. 1680–1757) was a Punjabi Sufi of the Qadiri order, born in Uch and settled at Kasur. His murshid, Shah Inayat Qadiri, was an Arain by caste — and Bulleh Shah, a Syed, was disowned by his own family for submitting to a man they considered beneath him. He answered by writing that scandal into his poetry, in Punjabi rather than Persian, for people who worked with their hands.

The Kheras in this kafi come from the Heer–Ranjha story. Heer of the Sials loves Ranjha, but her family marries her by force into the Khera clan and carries her away in a doli, the covered palanquin of a bride. For Punjabi Sufi poets that palanquin became the perfect image of a soul handed over to a life it did not choose — obligation, respectability, the marriage the world arranges for you while the real beloved stands elsewhere. When Bulleh Shah says send someone else, he is refusing that whole arrangement.

The second line reaches in the opposite direction — to arsh and kursi, the Throne and the Footstool of Islamic cosmology, the highest reaches of creation. Village romance and cosmic architecture sit in the same short song, and Bulleh Shah moves between them without a seam. That refusal to keep the earthly and the divine in separate rooms is what made his verse suspect to the orthodox of his time and beloved everywhere since.

His kafis are still sung at his shrine in Kasur, in qawwali gatherings, in Punjabi folk settings on both sides of the border, and by generations of modern singers who found in them a way of speaking about God that asks no clergy’s permission.

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