The life story of Lalan Fakir has always remained an interesting saga of fate and sudden turn of events any mortal may fall prey to. It has been a chosen, all time favorite subject for play, movie, novel and Jatras over the ages and popular T.V serials in the present.

Lalan was born, the story goes, in an orthodox Hindu family. When he was still young, he went out to visit some far off places of religious interest with some of his friends and associates from his village. They had completed their pilgrimage and were on their way back. Lalan, when still to cover some more miles from home, contracted small pox, then an almost incurable lethal disease. Lalan went into unconsciousness under severe spell of the malady and his fellow pilgrims taking Lalan to be dead, left him on the way, outside a village. An elderly kindhearted, childless woman belonging to the Muslim community found him in that condition when she was approaching a nearby canal to fetch water. Lalan, though almost dead by now, had not really died which the lady could have felt by her experience and motherly affection. One pirbaba living in the village and believed by the villagers including the woman who was an ardent follower of the god-man, to have supramental powers brought Lalan to senses and ultimately cured him at the request of the woman. Since the woman and the villagers could not be sure of the religious identity of Lalan who had absolutely forgotten his past, though now completely recovered, was adopted as son by the childless woman and was initiated into Islam by the Pirbaba.

Long after, when Lalan had by then acquired sound knowledge of Islam and particularly of the mystic faith of Sufism under the tutelage of the Pirbaba and had got back his memory of the past, he went back to his original village where his parents and wife lived. Under wrong information conveyed to them by Lalan’s fellow pilgrims of the past, his kindred had by now taken him to be dead and had performed his last rites. Lalan’s parents refused to accept him back into their family fearing social boycott and his wife also declined to accompany him and live with him in his new found home.

Lalan got back to his surrogate mother who was almost dead now with grief, missing his godsend child, was only overjoyed, hardly believing her luck for the second time. Lalan continued to live in the village and the prodigious possibilities lying latent in him as a poet and a religious visionary flourished into a full blown genius in time under love, affection and guidance of his parents and his Guru. For the rest of his life he kept alive in his heart his love for the religion he had acquired by birth which he successfully combined with his respect for the religion he adopted later.

Thus he became a staunch believer and exponent of a new, secular faith that yearns to reach for the love of the Almighty by loving all men on earth irrespective of their caste, creed, race and religion. This magnanimity of his faith and understanding has been very aptly reflected in the following lines of his song, perhaps the most well known and the most popular among his compositions:


    Sab Loke Koy Lalan Ki Jaat E Sansare
    ( All are anxious to know what religion of the world Lalan actually belongs to)
    Lalan Bole Jaater Ki Rup Dekhlam Na Ei Najore
    ( Lalan submits his ignorance and says, “ I have failed to visualize how one’s religion looks like”)
    Jagat Jure Jaater Katha, Galpo Kore Jatha Tatha
    (They, from all corners of the globe, Keep on talking about religion  And indulge in idle chatting on the subject)
    Jawa Kimba Asar Belai Jaater Chinha Roy Kare?
    (But, who bears any mark of religion. When he is born or sets out for his last journey?)