Wanderings with Bauls

An exasperated British rock musician once remarked, after stewing in his own juice at a Baul festival in the village of Boral, now a part of the city of Kolkata: “There are none so sedentary as the wandering Bauls!”

The Bauls just sat around all day, sang, played music, gossiped and quarrelled like fish-wives in a marathon which lasted 72 hours, getting up only to sit down again in rows to consume copious meals of rice, dal and vegetables, to bathe and to eliminate waste matter.

The Baul lifestyle does indeed assign primacy to being mobile, and this requires downsizing just enough to allow a man or a woman to be on the move within well-defined geographical boundaries, which lie in today’s West Bengal and Bangladesh. This downsizing has affected Baul posture through the ages. Bauls understood the utility of walking light much before present notions of portability came into use. Instruments were built to be easily carried. Possessions pruned down to the minimum legal.

Now that a wall contains Bangladesh from India, we’re still to see how the Bauls and fakirs adapt to these new taxonomies imposed from above by governments that are cut off from the horizontal paths treaded by our mystic minstrels. Till today, ancient tracks of ascetics are still in use in this region, currently a zone of extreme turbulence.

Among Baul singers, there’s an expression which defines the contradictions of a peripatetic lifestyle to counter the linear perception which northern academicians have always maintained when they have tried to define southern cultures.

“Uthley Gadha! Boshley Raja!”

Rising, we are donkeys! Sitting, we are kings!

Today’s Baul is still such a donkey, albeit thrown into a global orbit, carrying along all earthly possessions — duggi, ektara, kantha, kombol, korua, aatchla and sometimes even a cooperative Japanese wife equipped with an expensive smartphone and suitable apps. And still royal, because he or she holds court over many by the simple act of raising the voice to dithyrambic heights.

There’s walking away from and there’s walking towards. There’s escape and there’s exploration. In the Baul mode of walking, there’s a bit of both.

The editor of a glossy photo-journal in Paris once exclaimed delightedly when I described the unique Baul practice of Ultasadhana: “If you can show me that the Bauls are people who literally walk backwards, then I can try to slot them into front-page coverage.”

There’s migration and there’s reverse-migration and the transmigration of the soul. Baul songs and incantations celebrate this walking away of the soul from humdrum domestic routine towards a nobler, more spiritual realm.

Even five centuries later, the departure of Nimai Sanyasi, who walked out of his home, leaving behind his faithful wife Vishnupriya to follow a spiritual path, is a theme which brings tears to the eyes of many a Bengali woman. A century and a half ago, Lallan Fakir left home and returned years later, only to be rejected by his orthodox Hindu wife. His subsequent integration into the community of fakirs in Kushtiar district, now in Bangladesh, and the massive volume of mystic songs he left behind is a tale of reverse-migration too.

There is the cliché of the Baul done to death — a turbaned, bearded being on the move with an ektara held high.

The tradition of madhukuri , or honey gathering, allows the Baul to survive in the subsistence economy of rural Bengal. He walks in a circle around the village, raising his voice in song and clashing his cymbals. When the song of the Baul penetrates the ears of his listeners, an inner tree springs to life inside the body, bringing about a mysterious eclosion of seven flowers. Honey rises in the pistils of these flowers and, in exchange for this intangible gift, the villagers give him his needs of the day — rice, dal, vegetables, oil.

This practice of walking around a village to create an enchanted circle has all but disappeared because of the subsistence economy in the villages of Bengal, although Baul akhras are still quite active.

Quite removed from the cliché of a Baul singer in perpetual movement, a Baul akhra , or place of encounter and exchange, is an ancient version of a reality show. Put some people together in a closed space with strict limitations, and soon you can count on some hard punches and tough exchanges. Only among the Bauls, the exchanges, although virulent, are mostly philosophical. And the events manager, often behind the scenes, always strolling through unconcernedly, is the all-powerful Baul guru and guru ma, who intervenes uniquely when things get really out of hand.

For the Baul, the human spirit has no religion, no boundaries, no colour and no caste.

Wherever they travel, on foot or by local transport, from ashram to akhra to festival, from village to small town to megapolis, today’s Baul singers delve into the darkest corners of city and village to ferret out local traditions, melodies and rhythms, poems and fables which they integrate into their repertoire of songs, and through which they spread their noble philosophy of peaceful co-existence between man and woman, syncretism and humanism.

Let me describe a walk with the Bauls on one of these smaller routes through a country landscape in Bengal. A moist, sleepy, misty atmosphere, lush green rice fields on both sides of a narrow track, aal rasta , over which the Bauls go slipping and sliding across in Indian file, keeping a sharp eye on every step so as to not lose balance. The shimmering fields reflecting the sun, the clouds and the sky. It’s the month of Bhadra, or Bhadu, as it’s known in village parlance.

From mid-August to mid-September, Bhadu is the poorest period of the year in rural Bengal. Clouds curdle, showing patches of blue. The heat is sweltering. There are sudden spells of heavy rain, which can flood the land, cause the village to be besieged by hunger. There are no stocks of grain in the morai and the harvest is still a couple of months away.

Alongside this route flows the Kopai river, swollen with the rains. Just yesterday, it was easy to wade across. But today, the water is up to the shoulder, flowing swiftly.

In the distance, a grove of trees by the side of the river with white spots on them; and beyond them, the village of Islampur. As we approach the grove, the spots turn out to be pouched storks perched atop the trees. These birds are considered sacred by the local population, mainly Vaishnavas who, for centuries, have nurtured and nourished these sacred messengers from distant lands.

We enter the village, led in by the storks, which seem rudely familiar with the place and strut around the lanes as if they are the true inhabitants and the humans are merely temporary visitors.

The birds have been coming to this village from times unknown every April, and fly off every November when the patakas start bursting and the dhak and the dhol start thundering around the time of Kali Puja.

There are village houses under the tree.

Cattle feed on hay inside a shed. From inside a house, a Bhadu song can be heard.

“Bhadu, don’t go wandering in the road at night. Bhadu, Bhadu, we call out, Bhadu’s gone to the shepherds. She tried to run but fell into a pot of broken husks.”

In this particular season, village girls are allowed to walk out of their homes in a procession to sing Bhadu songs to earn some pocket money. The month of Bhadu is personified as a young maiden and carved into a doll, which is carried at the head of this procession.

It’s a season when village life becomes oppressive, when girls run away from home.

The legend of Bhadu exists in the districts of Murshidabad, Birbhum, Bankura, Medinipur and Purulia and Manbhum. There are many versions of this legend. Bhadu is a warrior-princess who is intercepted on her way to her marriage. She remains a virgin forever. Bhadu is a tree-climber. Bhadu is a runaway girl. Bhadu is a wild forest creature.

There are hardly any girls who sing these songs today. All the troupes of Bhadu singers that we meet are composed of men.

A single girl pirouettes like a mechanical doll, dressed in a yellow ghagri with a red border and a red blouse. She doesn’t sing. The accompanying men sing instead.

Village girls are locked in at home nowadays once they reach the age of menstruation and until they are married.

Times have changed, and so has walking. Scarcity has created new boundaries and obstacles, whether in the home or on the street.

The Baul singers today walk on the famished road to make their way towards the big cities. And walking in a megapolis such as Kolkata can be a dangerous affair.

Mimlu Sen is the author of Baulsphere

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