u/singhularitea
Jugni: A Comedy Awaiting Tragedy.
...The word jugni comes from jugnu, a firefly. A small, self-illuminating thing that travels through darkness. The metaphor is so obvious it embarrasses itself: she carries her own light. But what people forget about fireflies is that the light is not free. Every flash is a metabolic event, a tiny expenditure of the body’s resources. The firefly loses a little of itself with every flicker. And nobody thinks about this when they are praising the fireflies.
Jugni also means an ornament. A necklace. A necklace that does not choose who wears it. The necklace also does not decide when it comes off.
Jugni is the light and she is the decoration and she is not, in either version, the one who gets to rest.
In Punjabi folk music, Jugni is a traveler. She arrives in a city and she looks around and she comments on what she finds. She is funny. She is incisive. She notices everything.
Jugni jaa varhi Kalkatte — Jugni arrived in Kolkata. And then she tells you exactly what is wrong with Kolkata, with precision and wit, and there is a refrain, and you laugh, and then something catches in your throat because buried inside the joke was the truth. The children are hungry. The women are helpless. The lips are sewn but the eyes keep weeping.
She delivers tragedy as comedy. This is her gift and it is also her sentence.
She is the one who makes you laugh about the thing you cannot cry about. She holds the community’s grief in the shape of a punchline so that the community can process it without collapsing. She does this at every stop on her route. She arrives, she observes, she makes the unbearable bearable, and then she leaves. She is always leaving. That is the structure of the Jugni verse.
She arrives, she speaks, she goes.
Where does she go? No verse has ever addressed this...
Full Essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/fateyjoote/p/jugni?r=202jha&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
u/singhularitea — 12 days ago
▲ 2 r/PunjabiGenZ
Nobody told me what the word means.
I heard it in songs and assumed a ring,
a simple metal loop,
a love story with the usual arithmetic.
I nodded along.
***
But a chhalla and a jhalla are more than rhymes.
Jhalla is a madman.
At Harike Pattan,
where the Beas and the Satluj meet,
a boatman named Jhalla sent his son into the river.
The son never came back.
***
Chhalla beri boor e.
He is the blossom of the ber tree,
the flower that arrives before the fruit.
The fruit never came.
This is not a Shakespearean tragedy.
This is the cruelty of being.
This is what drowning looks like when the river is slow:
you don't notice how far from shore you've drifted until you can't see it anymore.
***
Panjaab’s grief was never allowed to be silent.
It was always performed, always shared, always witnessed.
But the witnessing changes nothing.
Panjaab sent its sons into the world.
And then Panjaab stood on the bank and waited.
The sons sent envelopes full of money
but kept the grief.
because the grief had no postal address.
***
The chhalla is given as a promise.
A circle with no end,
meant to mean forever.
Chhalla keeps returning to the loss.
He keeps circling the void of the thing he used to be.
The river didn't kill Chhalla. The river just revealed what was always true:
some men are blossoms that arrive before the fruit,
and the storm just has to show up before the fruit does.
- fatey joote
I have written a full essay on Chhalla and its influence of Panjaabi folk tradition, link is in comment.
u/singhularitea — 18 days ago
Nobody told me what the word means.
I heard it in songs and assumed a ring,
a simple metal loop,
a love story with the usual arithmetic.
I nodded along.
***
But a chhalla and a jhalla are more than rhymes.
Jhalla is a madman.
At Harike Pattan,
where the Beas and the Satluj meet,
a boatman named Jhalla sent his son into the river.
The son never came back.
***
Chhalla beri boor e.
He is the blossom of the ber tree,
the flower that arrives before the fruit.
The fruit never came.
This is not a Shakespearean tragedy.
This is the cruelty of being.
This is what drowning looks like when the river is slow:
you don't notice how far from shore you've drifted until you can't see it anymore.
***
Panjaab’s grief was never allowed to be silent.
It was always performed, always shared, always witnessed.
But the witnessing changes nothing.
Panjaab sent its sons into the world.
And then Panjaab stood on the bank and waited.
The sons sent envelopes full of money
but kept the grief.
because the grief had no postal address.
***
The chhalla is given as a promise.
A circle with no end,
meant to mean forever.
Chhalla keeps returning to the loss.
He keeps circling the void of the thing he used to be.
The river didn't kill Chhalla. The river just revealed what was always true:
some men are blossoms that arrive before the fruit,
and the storm just has to show up before the fruit does.
- fatey joote
I have written a full essay on Chhalla and its influence of Panjaabi folk tradition, you can read it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/fateyjoote/p/chhalla?r=202jha&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
u/singhularitea — 18 days ago
▲ 25 r/punjab
Nobody told me what the word means.
I heard it in songs and assumed a ring,
a simple metal loop,
a love story with the usual arithmetic.
I nodded along.
***
But a chhalla and a jhalla are more than rhymes.
Jhalla is a madman.
At Harike Pattan,
where the Beas and the Satluj meet,
a boatman named Jhalla sent his son into the river.
The son never came back.
***
Chhalla beri boor e.
He is the blossom of the ber tree,
the flower that arrives before the fruit.
The fruit never came.
This is not a Shakespearean tragedy.
This is the cruelty of being.
This is what drowning looks like when the river is slow:
you don't notice how far from shore you've drifted until you can't see it anymore.
***
Panjaab’s grief was never allowed to be silent.
It was always performed, always shared, always witnessed.
But the witnessing changes nothing.
Panjaab sent its sons into the world.
And then Panjaab stood on the bank and waited.
The sons sent envelopes full of money
but kept the grief.
because the grief had no postal address.
***
The chhalla is given as a promise.
A circle with no end,
meant to mean forever.
Chhalla keeps returning to the loss.
He keeps circling the void of the thing he used to be.
The river didn't kill Chhalla. The river just revealed what was always true:
some men are blossoms that arrive before the fruit,
and the storm just has to show up before the fruit does.
- fatey joote
I have written a full essay on Chhalla and its influence of Panjaabi folk tradition, link is in comments.
u/singhularitea — 18 days ago
A Man Leaves traces Of His sorrow Wherever He Walks Through
Neither for your pity Nor for your fear
Not to tether your love to his looming despair
But Because It's His Cry For Help
If He faces questions, sharp like arrows.
How are you? Why are you like this?
And he rages, spills thousand answers For How is he
And A Thousand Reasons For Why is he like this
If He Starts Crying Out Of the blue
Shows You His Wet Eyes And Hides The Tears That Follow
It's Not Because He's A deceiver Looking For Attention
But Because It's His Cry For Help
A Man Won't Ask For Help
Not Because He Thinks It Won't Help
He won't ask for help Because...He's A Man
He is stripped of his tears and thrown into wild
He Could Cry Freely When He Was A Child
Once a child,
He Could Run To His Mother And embrace the Warmth Of Her Belly
He Could Feel Things When He Was A Child
You Made Him A Man
The Worse You Can Do To A Child Is Raise Him To Be A Man
He Acts puerile, while the tears piled
A cry for help, A cry of a child
A cry for help, muffled but raw,
A silent rebellion against man's own law.
- fatey joote
More: Cry For Help
u/singhularitea — 26 days ago