Sohni I

Sohni Mahiwal is one of the popular love legends. According to the legend, when Sohni’s father, who is a potter comes to know about the secret love of her daughter with Mahiwal, who grazes Sohni’s fathers’ buffaloes, he forcibly marries away Sohni to someone else. One day when Sohni happens to visit an ascetic across the river, with her mother in law she meets Mahiwal there and then every night she starts meeting Mahiwal. Using a baked pot she crosses the river to meet her beloved. But one day her secret meetings were discovered by her sister in law who replaced the baked pot with unbaked one. That night when Sohni went out to meet Mahiwal she found the unbaked pot but she still decided to cross the river which was in flood that night. Thus she died and in order to save her Mahiwal also jumped in. So both the lovers finally met for ever. Here the painting depicts Sohni crossing the river trying to free herself from the clutches of the society.