|
| Festival harmony, Langha style |
| Monday September 21, 2009 |
 |
| On the night of Eid, like the other nine nights of Navratri, the swirling circles of Garba in a temple near Bhuj in Kutch will be dancing to the beats of Rasheeda's Dhol. 23-year-old Rasheeda is one of the few young Langha women who continue the tradition of her forebears, the Langhas, traditional folk musicians of Kutch who sing at weddings and festivals in powerful reverberating voices matched only by the acoustic impact of their Dhol. The Langhas may be followers of Islam but this does not inhibit them from singing the most intense and devout invocations to the Devi at the start of the Garba, every night, nine nights of Navratri. Dheere dheere janwe padharo mara maoji. This is a song sung to invite the goddess to savour the offerings before the dance can begin. And the evening I met Rasheeda at her home in Langha Seri, the lane where the Langhas live in the walled city, she sung this and other songs with great devotion. Minutes later, similar devotion surfaced, when at the sound of azaan, the music ceased and Rasheeda observed a few moments of silence. Outsiders to Kutch may be quick to pick up these shifts of faith but the Langhas themselves remain rather unselfconscious about their religious eclecticism. Rasheeda feels a close bond with Devi and derives shakti from her, which seems even more natural in her case since feminine power is at the centre of her upbringing in a family of six women. The six of them have varying degrees of proficiency in singing but all of them can play the Dhol masterfully. The real master, though, is Amina Ben, Rasheeda's oldest aunt. In her sixties, she remembers a time in her youth when she was invited to a festival of folk music, where among other dignitaries, also present were 'Doordarshan walle'. She was a village rustic, unschooled in the formalities of festivals and television recordings and so when she heard the announcement 'Amina Ben and Party', it took her a few minutes to comprehend that it was she who was being called upon stage along with her group, made up entirely of her sisters. The name stuck and the family of women musicians became regular performers during the annual Navratri celebrations at PPC Club, one of the upscale clubs of Bhuj. Here, Amina led her sisters, and subsequently her nieces like Rasheeda, for more than twenty years till seven years ago the club decided to replace the traditional music of the Langhas with a full blown modern orchestra. This Navratri Amina Ben has no invites to perform but as I visited her run down home she broke into spontaneous song, dipping into a repertoire of old Kutchi songs as well as what non Gujaratis like me identify as the theme song of Garba : pankhida no udi jajo pavagadh mein. While the Navratri songs are part of an unbroken continuity of the local folk tradition, like any other versatile artist Amina Ben has also picked up a range of other influences which she uses with devastating precision and wit. And so if a question trying to elicit her age leads to the Mallika Pukhraj classic 'abhi to main jawan hoon', a reference to my origins in the North of the country triggers a short but exuberant burst of 'ahun ahun' of Bhangra. Crossing boundaries of religion and culture comes easy to the Langhas. What is more difficult for them is dealing with the changing market of music. As demand for their repertoire declines, most Langha families have either moved out of Kutch or have left the trade, depending on what offers them better survival. Rasheeda is happy to earn some money as she worships the goddess, while simultaneously keeping Roza fasts and ending them on Eid, but Amina offers this song as her closing comments: pehle chandi ka sikka chalta tha ab udde kagaaz ke note zamaana badal gaya (the silver coins have given way to paper notes the world has changed) Post Script : If you have read this story so far, you are most likely someone who has not tired yet of the narratives of Hindu Muslim coexistence that we in the media almost routinely supply at every suitable occasion, even more so if it is as potent as today when Eid coincides with Navratri. I must confess to feeling some impatience with such stories. If the intent is to draw attention to our shared heritage, I suspect the subtext is our need to allay 'secular' anxieties, and the outcome is often formulaic stories that instead of affirming coexistence, end up underlining its fragility. Why else would newspapers and channels today pick out different yet similar stories, either the Hindu man who fasts during Ramzan or the Muslim woman who celebrates Eid at Ram Lila? Or the Langhas who are as comfortable doing namaz as singing aartis to the Devi? As the writer of the last mentioned story, I can only offer some limited insight into this trend by confessing that finding a syncretic tradition or culture alive in India can be a deeply moving experience that cuts through journalistic cynicism and polemic. If the narrative still remains formulaic, I say blame it on the poor writing. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Supriya Sharma is a roving reporter who, in the last six years, has moved base from Mumbai, to Bihar, and recently Delhi. She is now based in Ahmedabad.
