Final Year Project

Project Title

Spread Your Hem; Gather Love As It Falls: A Journey Guided By the Shah Jo Risalo

Description

This is a project of love, about love, on love, and guided by love. The paper and film follow the journeys of Suhni and Sasui from the Shah Jo Risalo by Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. I read his work in Urdu and Sindhi, exploring how different languages understand the experience of love differently. My analysis of Shah Latif is nestled within a transnational framework, using Ibn Arabi and Georgio Agamben's understanding of barzakh and the liminal to understand love as a force propelling us beyond limiting and constraining subjectivities. This thesis is also about my journey toward love. Towards embracing passion in all of its irrational, world, and self-ending capacities. My study of Shah Latif took me on a pilgrimage towards Bhit Shah, to his shrine, to witness the performance of his kalaam. I was accompanied by my mother, Shazia Hossain, and one of my closest friends, Rahim-Lilac. Each of us encountered love in our own ways, realizing that it wasn't the final destination (a rational, comprehensive understanding of love) that mattered, but rather the experience of the journey and the love, sacrifice, and duty it involved.