The last one, comprising mostly of old men over seventy, was closed after the fencing of Hazuri Bagh in the early 1980s. Heer singing groups, of which there were dozens in Lahore city alone, gradually faded. The replacement of this original singing format by gramophone, radio and transistor literally killed that part of our folk music. Singing Heer was an all-night affair that the villagers undertook in their leisurely time after the sowing of the wheat crop. If you asked "Does anybody read The Book", it meant if anybody could sing the verses of Heer.
If you asked somebody "Do you have The Book?" it meant whether they had a copy of Waris Shah’s epic tale Heer.
Seventy years ago, Heer Waris Shah was "The Book" in the villages of Punjab.
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