Before Labels, There Was Lalla
Before Labels, There Was Lalla A contemplative offering on Lalleshwari Long before the mind learned to divide the world into boxes— belief, caste, role, gender —there was a quieter knowing. Lalleshwari , lovingly addressed as Lal Ded and Lal Arifa , lived from that knowing. She did not remove labels as much as she preceded them. She stood at a point where the soul arrives before language, where identity has not yet hardened into armor. To meet Lalla is to remember a time within ourselves when we were not yet named by others. A time when awareness moved freely, curious and unafraid, before it was told who to be. Her spirituality does not ask us to fight labels; it invites us to step behind them—into the original simplicity from which they arise. Labels promise safety. They give the mind a place to rest. But Lalla knew their hidden cost: once named, life is filtered; once categorized, truth is negotiated. She chose a different fidelity—not to a category, but to immediacy. Her Vakhs s...
