This river has flown forever. Those who plunge, emerge – that’s how it’s always been. In these words, Shah Latif has immortalised the legend of Sohini, a potter’s daughter, who lives making pots and dies as her unbaked pot crumbles in a turgid river.

Sohini falls in love with a Muslim trader, Izzat Baig, but she is forcibly married off by her father to someone else. In his love for Sohini the wealthy trader becomes a penniless fakir, a humble cowherd – Mehar – who grazes cattle across the river. The tinkling call of the Beloved’s cattle bells across the river becomes a powerful motif in this story, a call for transgression, for setting out, for taking the plunge. Sohini swims to the other side to meet her love with only a baked clay pot as her support, and returns before dawn. When, one night, her baked clay pot is substituted with an unbaked one by her jealous sister-in-law, Sohini steps into the river only to merge with it. Mehar, hearing her cries, jumps in to merge with her.

Sohini represents the principle of absolute surrender and faith, and not holding back once it is clear what one must do.