Singing The Boatman: Hemango Biswas and the ‘Bahirana’ in Folk Music
Rongili Biswas As part of the legendary folk singer Hemango Biswas’ birth centenary celebration,the first volume of his collected works came out which contained among others, his writings on folk music. As one of the editors of that volume (Hemango Biswas Rachanasangraha, vol 1, Pranab Biswas and Rongili Biswas ed., Deys Publishing, Kolkata, 2012), I had to read his theories and critique on folk music closely. His theorization is complex, multi-layered and geared towards achieving a purity in folk singing. He firmly believed that folk singing is non-codified. Its sensibility is defined by the specificities of physical ambience, language, tune, rhythm of labour, styles of articulation as well as geographical, historical and cultural contexts of a particular region. In that sense, it cannot have a school or gharana as found in the classical musical tradition. If it has something that is construed and shaped by the parameters I just mentioned that would better be termed as bahirana, a mode of learning that draws upon the traditions of a particular region, and is firmly entrenched in the cultural specificities of the same. The compulsions of market economy constitute too strong a force working against the traditional modes of such pure performances. Artistes often present corrupt versions of traditional songs with accompaniments that are far removed from the purpose of preserving them. Urban and sometimes even rural audiences, whose perception has been moulded by the corrupt versions, do not desire anything better than those versions. Even serious artists often succumb to such demands. Hemango Biswas was a strong and often a lonely critic of such distortions in folk singing. As a student of his classes on folk singing and as his daughter and close associate, editing the volume made me share his anxieties, anxieties that get deepened in today’s context. One way of responding to that, I thought, would be to build up a musical archive where his own recordings, those of the artistes he thought as genuine representatives of the original styles and the songs collected by him sung in his preferred styles could be preserved. This is urgently required to minimize the loss that his own collection in the house has already undergone. The archive contains several notebooks containing the lyrics of songs collected by Biswas from various Indian provinces. These range over bhatiali, bhaoaia, kamrupi, bongeet, sari, jari, jhaore, ghumor, murshidi, jhumur, gambhira, bhadu, tusu, kajri, choiti, dhamail, lullaby, hori, bihu, etc. Within this repertoire, only a chosen few have been recorded in Biswas’ own voice (in the album Surma nadir gangchil), which gives a fundamental idea about the extremely nuanced and ornate style of bhatiali and dehatatwa he represented. Bhatiali is essentially the song of the boatman on the river. Bhatiali relates to the slow downstream movement of the boat while sari relates to the vigorous upstream journey. Since rivers constitute an integral part of the terrain of the two Bengals (West Bengal and Bangladesh) these songs are often considered to be one of the principal representative forms of folk songs from Bengal. Solitude in a way constitutes the core of bhatiali. On the one hand, the sound of the water brings in a lilting unevenness in the notational structure that calls for a specific vocal timbre for rendering it properly. On the other, bare nature and the very expanse of the river facing the boatman brings out an existential anguish. And bhatiali often tends to merge with dehatattwa– a genre of music that dwells on the philosophy of the body. In these, the river is typically used as a metaphor for life. Where to get anchored and how to attain transcendence (siddhi) avoiding the enticements of life (presented through the motifs of lights, markets, colours) are questions asked perennially. ‘Dehotori dilam chhario’ is a famous song of this genre. Here is a typical Hemango Biswas style. “ I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. If I drown, your name will be tarnished. Traders trade goods in the market Colourful lights dazzle the shop windows. They rob people in full glare On the principal street, Taking your name. I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. I am puzzled to see the market. Perhaps I am luckless, Fallen into trouble. I left Narayanganj to walk The path of Madanganj. Taking your name. I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. If you go to Madanganj The alligator of desire will catch you. Pass through the town of Siddhi first In order to reach the perennial abode. Taking your name. I unfasten the boat of my body in your name, o guru. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmULE_uK1qY This is a form of bhatiali that is extremely ornate in nature. Its classical, rambling, nuanced style of rendition is rare, nearly extinct nowadays. The names of the places act as metaphors, as is the norm for this mystical mode of communication. Madanganj, Narayanganj, Siddhirganj exist as place names and they also stand for symbols of desire, abstinence and transcendence. I am tempted to quote an artiste who hails from the same region as Hemango Biswas – Sylhet in Bangladesh – and is considered to be the master of a certain style. His rendition follows a mild beat and a different scansion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivCgAyTW73k I cry my heart out By this worldly river. O my mind, who will help you cross over. I wasted my time when times were good, I have come to the river at the bad hour Boatman, I do not know your name Who would I call? The boat is there, but not the boatman There is not a soul on the banks Boatman, I do not know your name Who would I call? Idam the lesser mortal says ‘ Who knows what awaits me’ Sitting at the dargah of Hazrat Shah Jalal Idam Shah cries. O my mind, who will help you cross over. This song was used in Rittwik Ghatak’s film ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ at
Kachchh. Khambhi. Kavya. : Six Poems For My Village of Six Memorial Stones
Amrit Gangar _________________ Chhasara (chha – six, sarā – memorial stones, also called khāmbhi or pāliya in Kachchh and Kāthiawād; though sarā or saro is a Kachchhi word) is a village of my childhood memories and therefore it exists. It exists within me and in the mānas–garbha (mind-womb) of both time and space. Two smaller villages flanked it, divided by the same river named Bhookhi (Hungry) that somehow turned its course. Perhaps, she was in search of water – epār Bhookhi, opār Bhookhi! She remained dry perennially, hungry for water, and occasionally expressed her terrible fury if it rained heavily and a remote dam somewhere on Kachchh’s deserty topography impregnated her, flooding, fanatically flooding. Much towards inside her shore, she inhabited an open well with a cement-concrete flat elevated surface that surprisingly remained full of deep waters, and would generously bathe many men. Young boys would use it as a swimming pool. Along her coast, the Bhookhi had yet another much deeper and bigger well with a havādo (a pucca reservoir) outside it, which would serve and sooth the thirsty cattle under the burning sun, awaiting eagerly the godhuli bela (dusk time). A little away from her shore, inside the bāri wall (the pucca-built tall wall with a window projecting towards Bhookhi and a hill that was abode of a pir’s shrine) was another well, with pulleys called, Sākariyo Kuvo (a well with waters as sweet as sugar) that would quench the villagers’ thirst, help them cook their daily hot food and make tea. Of the two villages across Bhookhi nadi, one had the privilege of having the service of a mochi (cobbler) that my village didn’t have, while the other had a self-taught medical doctor, who, in his khādi clothes, would visit my village riding his handsome horse. Their visits were significantly essential. I have a feeling that to be a good cobbler or a doctor, you need to have strong poetic intuition. Well, my village had a flour mill that both villages on the banks of Bhookhi didn’t have. Run on a machine fuelled by diesel oil, the mill would create a harsh sound, chhuk chhuk chhuk—like a locomotive engine, but its ingenuous owner had placed a small empty tin box on its exhaust vertical pipe which would turn the chhuk chhuk into a euphonic kuhu kuhu of koyaliyā, the cuckoo. And the sound would keep both the villages across Bhookhi informed about the flour mill’s working existence. Crossing the Bhookhi, the mochi would walk a-lame (he had polio) two miles to my village every week or fortnight as many torn shoes would be waiting for him. The doctor would also be on call – on horse, with his leather box of allopathic medicines. It’s the image of shoes that pushes me into a memory, memory of death, a forced death and the well on the river Bhookhi! On that early dawn, dogs had started sounding differently; the owl on an old peepal tree had lowered his mysterious eyelashes, small insects had started emerging from sandy streets. Something had gone devastatingly wrong somewhere. An early bather on the Bhookhi well had seen a pair of solitary shoes, a pair of spectacles, a stick and a Gandhi cap on its surface. Anxious, as he looked into the well, he saw a human body floating. Shocked, he shouted “Magan Patel!” while the misty-humid Bhookhi remained non-indifferent and self-absorbed. Soon, the news spread across the stunned village while the day had barely broken. Many rushed towards the well. The man’s pregnant wife was wailing and their four children added to the heart wrenching cries. He was a half-aged step son of a village chief (Patel), whom I, with my childhood-eyes, would often spy walking alone swiftly, talking to himself most of the time. He was an intelligent man but deeply perturbed somewhere within–that it is what I had felt. It had taken a massive effort to pull out his unusually swollen body from the well. At the time it was beyond me to comprehend the meaning of death but the image of the swollen body is still heavily stuck on my memory-scape. The Bhookhi well, someone said, had taken as many as seven lives as its toll! Years after, I stand in front of the six weather-worn sandstone sarā, having no script on their bodies to decipher, except poke-marks and unheard sighs of the dead: five Rajput brothers and their sister (and her little baby) were all killed in a little war for a fiefdom. Four centuries have gone by since but oral tales circulate around, in whispers or is it whoosh! The sister’s husband was also killed some furlongs away and his memorial stone (Hekalsaro) stands on a farm enveloped in an eternal mirage (Saro 1, 2). Nobody knows the names of these souls though their periodicity is an acceptable conjecture. But the fact of the matter is that these six (plus one) tall memorial stones are still there. That bit cannot be a fabricated. Chhasarā, the village of six memorial stones has gone on to desolate itself gradually. More and more families have left it for cities in search of livelihood. Only some old widows still inhabited it. They all wore maroon, black, white or even blue clothes– as a mark of their widowhood. All battling loneliness while their sons live afar. They would sustain their meagre existence. One such widow, stooping and frail in frame, suffered from terribly chronic asthma. In winters, it would be unbearable for her and she would breathe laboriously and loudly; so loudly that the entire village would helplessly witness her misery through its organs of hearing (Saro 3). Summer noons, with blazing winds, would be lazy and laidback; often the potter’s donkey would walk through the streets alone in a futile search of a mate and install itself naked (physical nakedness as we define it) in the empty village square. Its search punctuated by a mourning dove in the chabutrā, the
Why Bear It Like A Crucifix ?
Shiv Prasad Joshi [Translation: HUG] ________________________ That there is a well-planned pattern of attacks is quite evident. One does not need to be thrilled with any prophetic prediction in this regard. People shall continue to be killed. Our surroundings are suffused with a kind of painful despondency. Various regions and sects are despairing. Canker and curses arise from odd corners. It is not that every cry for the redressal of injustice reverberates only from the places from where they can be heard loudly. All peril won’t come at one go. Attacks against the freedoms of unity, religion and expression are not new. Such things have been in practice, as per expected convention, since the time of Manto. The lines penned by such poets are so dear to us and to many fresh young minds and souls. We live and quote such words and phrases and we move ahead. When hawks and falcons dare us, like penetrating light from a torch we focus such phrases on those predators. Some respected writers in Hindi have shown indifference and have been generally inactive. Such reactions surprise the younger generation and make them mute and taciturn. Perhaps the same patterns are being enacted in other languages too. But gentlemen, those who are returning awards are not ‘a tired lot.’ These are courageous people,fired with the energy of resistance. This is not an immediate and easy route to heroism.Nor is this any Bollywood masala film—now showing. No, this does not seem to be an emotional outburst or useless sentimentality under whose aegis tales of martyrdom are to be written. This is no slapdash superficiality. Do you consider this whole thing in such a light? History turns back and demands something today. Some people wrap themselves in blankets and, turning the other way, doze off. Forget Sahitya Akademi. Look at the writerly angst which, arising out of their artistic creations, has turned out determined resolutions. This is spreading. Is this a disease or an infection? Till what time shall you wait? What will happen when you shall say—yes, now we have reached the limit? Do you need the sound or the effects of a loud explosion so that all limits can be shattered? Why shall you bear this like a crucifix? It is not that Christ wanted to bear the crucifix willfully. It was brought upon him. Are you trying to say that this predicament has been thrust upon you? This crucifix does bear its full weight upon you every single day and it crushes you. But what about those who are being bludgeoned to death? Do these folks harbour any torturous nail of affliction that pierces your soul straight to make you shriek in pain? Instead of carrying this cross of remorse and fanning this restiveness of not being able to make a difference, why not take on this responsibility of the collective? How can you make this the solitude of all your agony and criticality? In such times. How can you remain isolated? Why are you getting yourself mired in the metaphor of bearing the crucifix? You are doing that anyway—in your everyday suffering and torment, in violence and in struggles. How and when did this idea of awards get entangled and started being counted within the axis of your writerly existence? You were not born to bear the cross. Your aim was to compose poetry. You did care about this troubled and exploited society. Hence you began writing in the first place. So, where did this crucifix come from? And what is this thing about exposing and unmasking? Why are our dear poets getting entangled in idioms? Why are they speaking through the nodes of a certain righteousness, as if whatever they say must be the correct and proven truth? Why is resistance being so downgraded—wherefore this skepticism? So, when we see this collective spirit in Kannada, Punjabi, Konkani and Marathi, why is there this proliferation of camps and coteries in Hindi? Why do many different-hued flags flutter over its shamiana? As if it is still the British Raj or some pre-Raj scenario. What about a common tent, a single camp? Who may be infiltrating these camps? It is not surprising that what the wealthy and the powerful of the nation believe is more or less what you have come to believe. Most smart-aleck media pundits also arrive at similar conclusions. And the writers are being said to be of two kinds. Look, Chetan Bhagat has also become a speaker with an opinion. Elements like Bhagat are giving us nuggets of wisdom. And people like Anupam Kher too, always acting the sentinel toany criticism ofthe PM. They have the gumption to seek accounts from the writers. Even someone like Shashi Tharoor, the controversial and controversialist, feels the need to offer his opinion. Stay a writer if you are one; do not trespass into politics. And the sound of this terrible laughter–that reverberates from Delhi to the farthest qasbah-mohalla of India—Bow before me! Bow down or else—should no one speak anything about that? Should all turn supplicants? Is that even possible? I don’t know why all these learned, respected souls seem to be floundering. This time we are correct. This is not vanity, just self-worth. Not cleverness, it is courage. Not selfishness, it is conscience. Our conscience is in perfect sync with our soul. This is permanent uprightness. Please do return to this uprightness. This return shall mean an admission into the future. The future has always been created by uprightness. Not through this flailing and flittering. From what custody shall you frame your next creation? What heartstrings shall trill and tremble before your shut eyes? Surely Muktibodh, had he been around, would have said on our behalf—what is your politics, partner? It is not a cliché to have converted such a great piece of writing as Andhere Mein into a cliché so that every ‘sated’ soul might no more speak on and about it. Stop drinking Andhere Mein like a cold drink
The Ghaat Within
Biswadeb Mukhopadhay ______________________ This is a poet of circularity—of the potter’s wheel, the rotund staircase, local implements like the maku and the turpun, the chakravyuh, the foundation-stone, the navel, the chalice, planetary orbits, the vortex in the pond—such motifs reappear. This is also a poet who believes that each creation, including the very idea of I, owes itself to the superimposition of the wave function of individual particles, continuously taking shape all around us. Thereafter all kinds of permutations and associations are possible. Sometimes that happens through vaak, through which we exchange bhava. Bhava is a many-valued proposition, a hypothesis which we may also give the name of wonder. Poetry gives shape to wonderment, and so it plays sounds and particles that stay in the nooks and niches of our everyday existence. This exchange of wonderment may sometimes prove incommensurable within the frameworks of our relationalities but it is not impossible to work that out. Perhaps poetry comes closest to bridging this incommensurability. The poet knows that the all scenes of marvel and wonderment are taking place within a smallish planet called earth, revolving around a mid-sized star in the milky-way. The poet has to forever be aware that art’s source and canvas is finally, the universe itself. The poet’s life, therefore, is a kind of sadhana, the same as that of the scientist. This sadhana, a repetition and an augmentation at the same time, is also a function of a perpetual flux: one that runs between the inner universe of our subjectivity and the outer, galactic presence. Does one travel from thought to mind, or is it the reverse? Do one and one make two or does the very idea of one envelop all duality within it? Does the brahmanda reside within our anubhavas or do anubhavas amass as entropy in this cosmos? We come back to the circular. The new returns, as the poet rearranges syntax, breaking form— again and again. He also renews an ancient bond with all that is the heart’s—apparently forgotten and left out, and yet all the time, they travel with us and with this our rushing planet. Characteristically, his poem titled Address, from the collection Pa Rekhechhen Parom (Parom Sets his Feet), concludes in this manner— Biswa Brahmanda post-office Zila Birbhum. ———————————————- Sorrows and Grandma In your next life, like kakurs you shall hang on kakur trees Saying this, my grandma Once blessed sorrow It’s difficult to say why she did this, may be since It never left us even in times of great distress. Reasons apart, We are told— That since that day, thus proliferated This our immense fruit garden Some utterances work like a mantra Though after this Grandma said so many other things as well —placing her palm on didi’s head She had said: “Be a Rajrani.” To me too She had said something, and engraved with baba’s name That mannat-pebble still dangles in the Peer’s abode. Baba is no more. This our sorrow and grandma’s tale We may also call it poetry, if we wish. If you are doubtful, why don’t you visit us around twilight someday? Come, sit around this our courtyard. You’d see How leaden darkness descends slowly, slowly… And right underneath the kakur-tree macha You’d spot, dangling Dark black, tall long, just-like-that sorrows and their fledgling little brood. *** Kalighat Temple No legroom in the temple, because everyone brings sins befitting his means, hence, the hustle to unburden those is also acute. One man supplicates, as if to cede All his depravity, another flings a coin And a third, anointing himself in temple-dust, smeared with tears Says, “All my sins I hand over to you thakur.” As prescribed, in clusters The disciples return each to their homes But Hari! Hari! The same stony weight each still carries within! Then More darkness Descends on the temple-precinct Roams alone, forlorn In Kali-kshetra, only a dog despondent. *** Ghani At the end of a long day’s trek Evening at a Kohlu’s house There, Kohlu’s daughter, standing with a lantern, Lights up the well-side. On the raised deck Water in a brass urn, a folded gamchha, And a footstool standing by. Moorland Hertalpur Dusk drops in torrents there Afar, the thuggee village… That horned moon now, splits open the kaash grove— The nightlong pestle rotates in the starry courtyard Tup Tup Honey-like sounds. In the morning an ancient earthen pot brims with oil. *** Tanti Colony’s Sleepy Time There spins the spindle, the bobbin whirrs So late at night. Arre O Paban, in the tant-room Why weave so frantic baap? Won’t you hit the sack? In the room, dust swirls Busy rats, yonder the rusty handle of an Old umbrella, chaupaya, pillow-wrapped Blanket, tattered rugs… Through the low lying windows, afar, strings of roofs Bolted door. Sleep. Encompassing Dhanekhali, Shantipur Hums the sound of tant, tant spins, someone weaves tant. *** Contentment Some go in darkness, some go in shadow At lantern’s end children are from lessons distracted There is only babel. The babbling stays close, so Sitting at evening’s portico A few kinsfolk chat, contented. *** The Husk Like a pillow cover, one day, a swift wrench shall invert me. Steadily the hand wreathes. Flakey cotton swabs underneath Fog’s unique body… All through the night The inside turns out, the outside in. *** Ghaat Who is that who scrubs dishes all night? Is the ghaat lodged inside the body? Yes, the ghaat is lodged inside the body! *** Path If the insect decides to traverse the path obverse To the old-man’s, will it by and by re-enter the body As the ancient sperm-tick? The old-man trudges northward Toward the embedded insect inquiry. *** The Listener From two throbbing meatballs emanate Joy’s ether-waves In the middle, sprawls a cosmic termination Dust-particles cipher-like. Unconnected…