Over the top

Raat yuun dil mein teri khoi hui yaad aai
Jaiseay wiraanay mein chupke se bahaar aajae

Last night, your memories came back to me, as though
Spring stealthily should come back to wilderness

Like cooling drops of dew, a few lines of poetry became succour from the summer sun.  To celebrate the centenary year of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s birth, a collective of civic groups based in Ahmedabad, India, organized a reading of the poet’s work. Sadiq Noor Pathan, a published poet and program executive at the local All India Radio station, began with a recording of Faiz reciting his work.  Playing a 1980s recording of Ashaar,Tanhaai , and Bol, Pathan introduced us to the gentle and powerful quality of South Asia’s leading modern Urdu poet’s verse in the poet’s own voice.  First his lyrical lament of solitude, and a few seconds later, his call to speak up for one’s convictions filled the small room on second floor of St Xavier’s Social Service Society building where about 25 of us had gathered.

Pathan began chronicling Faiz’s life recounting a few stories from his father Sultan Mohammad Khan’s dramatic life. He narrated how an encounter in a mosque with an Afghan officer, who got impressed with the teenager’s fluency in English, opened up opportunities that otherwise may not have come by for Faiz‘s father, born to a poor farmer in Sialkot near Lahore.  Faiz grew up in privilege in Sialkot where his father returned from England to practise law, and received the best of education in Urdu and English in the 1920s.With a handful of anecdotes, Pathan traced milestones from the poet’s life, his education at Government College Lahore, first job teaching literature at a college in Amritsar, a three-year stint in British army during the Second World War, and his meeting, and later, marriage to Alys George, an English socialist who was on a visit to her sister’s house in Kashmir.

Beginning with a verse from Faiz ‘s first collection of poem Naqsh-e-Fariyadi (The lamenting image), (phrase which Faiz’s predecessor Asadullah Khan ‘Ghalib’ begins his first collection of verse Diwaan-e-Ghalib with) , Pathan invited those listening in to join him in mapping the poets’s oeuvre; romantic verse written between 1928-1935 as well as his more publicly-engaged verse of later years.  He shared stories about the poet’s life in a mix of Urdu, Gujarati and Hindi, and a few from those listening took turns to recite and sing.

Professor Abid Shamsi , who taught Pathan as professor and Head of Department of English at St Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad, recited Subh-e-Azaadi (The dawn of freedom); in the poem, Faiz’s refuses to settle for freedom that had come accompanied with violence of the 1947-communal riots in India and Pakistan. His views brought him much criticism in newly-independent Pakistan:

Ye dagh dagh ujala ye shabgazida sahar,
Wo intezaar tha jiska, ye wo sahar to nahin

This blemished light, this night-devoured dawn
Is surely not the dawn we waited for

Faiz’s refusal to settle for wounded freedom, tyranny, and inequality seems relevant in contemporary India, where access to entitlements is contingent on wealth, a city or a rural setting, gender, and frequently, a person’s surname. It especially resonated in Ahmedabad, a severely ghettoized city of Gujarat where following the communal riots of 2002, basic freedoms  such as where one may live, work, or send one’s children to school hinge on religion.

Ghulam Farid, Pathan’s peer who recently retired from government service, next sang the ghazal Gulon mein rang bhare, Faiz’s refrain to his beloved – freedom – from Zindan Naama (Prison Letters):

Maqaam, Faiz, koi raah mein jacha hi nahin
Jo  qu-e-yaar se nikle, toh soo-e-daar chale

No place appealed to us anywhere on the way, Faiz,
Leaving the loved one’s lane, we turned to the gallows

Here, Faiz forsakes any middle-ground when it comes to his beloved, i.e., his freedom. He talks of leaving qu-e-yaar ,his beloved’s lane, and heading to soo-e-daar, the spot where he may be executed. He declares he would rather die than give up his freedom to speak and write.  Writing from Montgomery prison in Punjab, when he was jailed for four years from 1951-1955 on charges of plotting to overthrow Liaqat Ali’s government, Faiz here invokes both freedom from injustice, and his freedom to write when the government had banned his work from being published or recited.

Recreating this mood of defiance, Pathan next played a recording of Noor Jehan singing Mujh se pehle si mohabbat mere mehboob na maang (Do not ask of me, my beloved, that same love), recounting an anecdote where the singer sang the verse at a state function defying the government’s ban on reciting the jailed poet’s verse.  This evocative verse, one of Faiz’s most well-known and loved works that later appeared in a film as well, voices his dilemma of reconciling romantic love for his beloved with a deeper engagement with the region’s socio-political reality. In her book ‘100 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz’, Dehradun-based translator Sarvat Rahman deftly describes this transition in Faiz’s thought and work. ‘From the depth of his poetic being, imbued with sufi ideals of Hafiz and Rumi and all the great Urdu poets, came to him the awareness that his earlier quest for the beloved, and his later one for social justice for all humanity, are of the same nature. Both demand of him his utter devotion and, ultimately, the sacrifice of his life. He gives them both the same visage to begin with,’ writes Rahman.

Pathan played a clip of Bollywood great Dilip Kumar speaking about Faiz. Reciting Mauzooe-e-sukhan (Subjects of verse) slowly, with pleasure, the actor concludes Faiz to be the greatest poets he has encountered in what he describes as his limited mutayala(reading) and mushahida(observation).  We then listened to accounts from letters Faiz wrote to his wife Alys from jail where he describes the beauty of the climbers and the sky he could see from his barrack window, the lyricism of perhon ki shaakhon pe thaki chaandni (moonlight resting wary on tree-tops) , and the music in his defiant Aaj bazaar mein paa-ba-jolan chalo (walking through the markets, chains around our feet).

Pathan concluded with a few lines from Intisaab (Dedication), one of Faiz’s last verses, a call-of-arms to the stone cutter, the courtesan, the factory worker, the postman.  The reading went on half hour longer than scheduled. When we stepped out, the sun had become shade.

~ Anumeha writes for Tehelka magazine. anumeha.yadav@gmail.com

By Anurag Mazumdar

How Mumbai’s Bandwallahs keep chugging in difficult times.

Few of us would notice them for more than a second. They stand in obscure corners in dimly lit alleyways while the glitter and dazzle of the wedding party shadows them forever. They arrive at the wedding before everyone, only to wait patiently for the bridegroom to arrive in his chariot. And yet in all the paraphernalia of receiving the bridegroom they are dodged aside and told to make way for the groom to walk to the venue. And still they keep their trumpets blaring, clarinets chirping, drums beating and their hopes fluttering. Even in the face of the worst crisis in their lives, they are ever ready to bring a smile to the faces of the ‘baraati’ (the wedding procession). They are the unsung artists of the city whose music drowns in the cacophony of noises surrounding them. This is the story of the baraati bands.

Photo: Invisible Lens, Flickr

Their stories start from the distant villages of the country from where they travel to the big cities looking for better employment. Contrary to popular belief they are schooled in the art of the baraati band from an early age. The training is often rigorous and involves a lot of patience, sacrifice and determination. According to Suresh, member of the Vishal Band, ‘One needs to start from an early age in order to achieve perfection when one grows up. This is an art form that requires you to practise for long hours.’

Suresh rues the lack of patrons for their art. While classical music receives a lot of attention and patronage they are often forgotten in the midst of all the music that surrounds them. Some say it is the lack of publicity that has rendered an air of obscurity to their profession. Suresh who hails from Latur in Maharashtra however disagrees: ‘Coming from Latur, I was always surrounded by musical instruments. I just happened to pick up one of them and learn the basics myself. Before I knew I was practising in my father’s band with the other regular band members. So for us, it was never a matter of an exotic art form. It was a part of what we had grown up with.’

Suresh’s voice finds support in the words of Shantaram who hails from Ulhasnagar. He has been a part of the New Brass Band for about two months now. He feels strongly that training is required. But he has his own reservations about training. He says that it would not be wise to give the clarinet or the trumpet to people under the age of eighteen years. ‘They are not developed for playing that instrument.’

Shantaram had waited for a long time before he could play the clarinet. He explains the intricacies of playing the clarinet while dressing up for his performance at the Ahobila wedding hall in front of Diamond Garden in Chembur. According to him, the clarinet is one of the sweetest instruments of the band as it can imitate the voice of a female artist. The clarinet has twenty-four keys which are very difficult to master. ‘If one can master the clarinet, one can master any other instrument in the band as clarinet is the most difficult to play.’

Shiva disagrees. He belongs to the Vishal Band which is very close to where Suresh stays. He says, ‘It is not very difficult to play the clarinet as there are lots of keys. But the trumpet is increasingly difficult as it requires a lot of energy in contrast to the clarinet which does not require so much energy after all.’ He recounts stories of older musicians who developed bouts of illness where they vomited blood because of increased pressure on their lungs for an insane amount of time. Even though he does not play the trumpet himself, he does not shy away from cracking a joke on the plight of the trumpet players. He says, ‘Hum bolte hain ki upar ke sur bajate bajate ek din sach mein upar chale jayenge. (One day we will make it to the top (meaning heaven) while playing the trumpet at higher notes).’

It is these little jokes here and there that bind these people together and provide the much necessary break that each of them deserve. Most of them live in the accommodation provided by the owner of the band. Venkat, who hails from Vidharbha in Karnataka has no complains when it comes to the place he is staying now. All he says is, ‘Sometimes there are too many of us in a room and it gets increasingly difficult for each of us to find a place to sleep. Then some of us move to the office downstairs and sleep there.’

Most of these places meant for sleeping are atop the office room of the band and thus serve as a resting room for the band when they are not practising there. It is in these poorly lit rundown rooms that the band members bond over their music. Each of them comes from their own gharana and it is a matter of time before all of them start playing the same tunes. When they are not practising they discuss their families and make plans for the future. They discuss their wages which is often not sufficient for maintaining their families back in the villages. Anna Shripati Srinagare says, ‘It is rather difficult to keep your body and soul together during the initial days.  One often thinks of switching professions.’

Most musicians stick it out with the five thousand rupees that is handed to them by the band owner. However, most musicians are hired on contracts and are not paid more than two thousand rupees as their monthly salary. Having been the bandmaster for the New Brass Band for over thirty years, Anna Shripati thinks he has made the right choice by not letting his sons come into this profession. ‘My elder son is the manager of a bank and my younger son is studying medicine’, he gleams proudly. He is of the opinion that people who have some other talent or can develop any other skill should not ever consider joining this profession.

This, however, does not deter thsoe who want to join this profession out of their own will. Mohit plays the khanjar in the Vishal Band and he is only eleven years old. He ran away from his home in Alandi near Pune to join his uncle who was in this profession. Looking sheepishly at the other band members who treat him very affectionately, he says, ‘I want to play the clarinet when I grow up. I also want to be the bandmaster.’

There are more who have joined this profession willingly. Take the case of Dilip Sinoon. Dilip is a Masters student in Hindi Language and Literature at KSK College in Bhid district of Maharashtra. He plays trumpet in a band which he joined a couple of years ago. But he knows the perils of working for a wedding band. That is why he applied for the Maharashtra Civil Services examination for a government job. Sadly, he could not make it. He is nonetheless proud that he could make it to this profession given that none of his family members were in the baraati tradition.

Most of the band members move to other professions when the wedding season is not on. The wedding season employs them from November to March. The Ganpati celebrations also keep them busy in the month of September. Apart from that they have to find alternate means of employment. Those who have migrated from the villages return to their villages in search of jobs. Others who stay back look for jobs in construction sites. Some are employed as carpenters. While the owner pays a salary to the permanent members even if the wedding season is not on, the contractual members are not paid during this time. Shiva, from the New Brass Band says, ‘It is during these times that we feel like committing suicide. There are hardly any opportunities in the village. Who would go back there after living in a city?’

The city is intrinsically related to the lives and professions of these men. While they don’t deny that the village is a better place to settle in, they also admit that the city has given them more than they ever imagined. Balraj from the Maharashtra Dosti Musical Band says, ‘People in the city have become richer. Earlier they used to give us perks in hundreds, now they give in thousands.’

Their experience of the city is also linked with the charm of Bollywood. ‘Bollywood has used us in a lot of its shoots. They are welcome from time to time as they pay us a lot of money.’ says Suresh. He says he has been part of numerous shoots for several films. He finds it funny appearing in films because all they have to do is stand in front of the camera and pose as if they are playing the instruments. In fact, the members of the New Brass Band are regulars for the serials produced by Ekta Kapoor, one of the top producers of television soaps in the country who produced serials like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. They are generally hired by the event managers for a day of shoot, and they generally don’t need to play their instruments.

Anna of the Vishal Band however warns them of the perils of falling into the trap of event managers. ‘Event managers are the latest fad in the marriage business. They generally eat up a major portion of the money and pay the band members poorly.’

Trends are changing fast and the band members are only too aware of it. The event managers also organise the DJ (Disk Jockeys) in the day of the marriage, thus undermining the importance of the baraati band itself. The bands had to include the synthesiser to combat the influence of the DJ and his electronic music. Though the older members would still want to maintain the pristine nature of acoustic music, times are changing fast. They are evident in the selection of songs in the New Brass Band. The current favourite among the young is Munni Badnam Huyi from the movie Dabangg. Though the senior members of the band scoff at these songs, they are forced to play them due to their high demands.

‘I would any day choose old songs of Mohammed Rafi as they had melody in them. Nowadays, there is no melody in songs. People just shout and scream,’ laments Shantaram, a veteran in the Vishal Band.

The stories of baraati are nestled somewhere in the multibillion dollar industry aptly called the big, fat Indian wedding. Their tales are often brushed aside in the daily drudgery of life in the city. Their music is swept under our daily dose of digital music from our Ipods and laptops. While waiting patiently for the bridegroom to arrive in his car, they put on their glittery red garments with golden sequinned borders and get ready for their performance. They are hard to recognise once they put on this regal garb. As the groom arrives, they quickly spring into action, their instruments come to life. The listless faces now become animated, each with their own tune. Their own share of aspiration, hope and sadness follow the ebb and tide of the music flowing from their instruments. While the city lies unaware of their pain, their music permeates in its veins: Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hain…

By Surabhi Pudasaini

The idea of organic conversations and collaborations across Southasian borders is a warm and fuzzy one. The reality, however, is far colder, with such exchanges uncommon. (more…)