Gourd’s own melody

The dark clouds overhead and the lush green fields swaying in the gentle breeze are a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of city life — enough to draw out the poet in the most prosaic soul. But it’s despondency that these rain-bearing clouds evoke in Shyam Barui, a farmer in Poshpur village in Hooghly district, about 50 km from Kolkata.

Shyam Barui, a farmer in Poshpur village, says gourd cultivation is pushing him into losses year after year

The unseasonal rains threaten to destroy his bottle gourd crop yet again, adding to his mounting losses.

“Nature has been playing a cruel joke with our lives for the past few years. I had grown bottle gourd with a lot of hope this year but the sky looks ready to pour water on our hard work. I suffered massive losses last year too,” says the 40-year-old Barui, adding that the West Bengal government remains indifferent to his plight.

Sowing usually begins in the last week of October and the gourds, weighing 25-40 kg and with a diameter of 45-47 inches each, are ready to be harvested in the first week of April. A chief source of income for the growers are the manufacturers of stringed musical instruments such as the tanpura and sitar. The shell of the gourd is perfectly suited for the devices’ deep, pear-shaped resonator — called khol in Bengali.

However, there has been a dwindling demand for the shells in recent years. “Several hundred shells are lying unsold in my house. I managed to sell just 700 of the 1,800 gourds harvested last year,” says Barui.

Additionally, the losses from pest attacks and unseasonal weather are pushing the growers to look at alternative crops.

“I have reduced the bottle gourd growing area to 2 bighas from 4 bighas,” says Biswanath Singh, a middle-aged farmer who suffered huge losses last year due to unseasonal rains.

Howrah and Hooghly districts are the traditional growing areas for the gourds but, today, only a few farmers in Poshpur — long famous for the quality of its gourd shells — cultivate them.

Manufacturers of sitar and tanpura, in turn, say they are losing out to cheaper electronic alternatives.

“The sitar or the tanpura is a labour of love. It takes at least six months to make a good sitar, but the returns don’t match the effort involved. I can hardly make 12 best quality sitars in a year and they fetch only ₹2,000 each. The income is barely enough to run any household, so most manufacturers have shifted to an alternative livelihood or compromised on the quality of their products,” says 68-year-old Jayanta Kumar Sengupta, who has been running a manufacturing unit in north Kolkata for over four decades.

The electronic versions have also put paid to the livelihood of music instructors such as Satyajit Chakravorty. Says the 60-year-old teacher in Dhaka, Bangladesh, “It takes a minimum of 10-12 years to gain some command over the sitar but people hardly have the patience for it. Everybody wants to make quick money. Even with proper training, skilled musicians struggle to earn enough as there are fewer concerts today. The media, too, has no space to broadcast classical programmes. Several good musicians in India and Bangladesh are idling without work today.”

Lalbazar in central Kolkata, the location for the headquarters of Kolkata police, is equally famous as a hub for shops selling musical instruments. Sanju Pal, who runs a 120-year-old shop at the Lalbazar crossing, says that he sells only a few sitars and tanpuras each month. “Around a decade ago, we used to sell 12-15 sitars and tanpuras every month but it is a challenge to cross even five today,” he says.

The silver lining in this gloomy scenario is the rise in demand from overseas buyers. Manoj Kumar Sardar, a wholesale and retail seller and exporter of musical instruments and electronic gadgets, says sales of sitar and tanpura to Germany and other European countries have increased in recent years. “They seem to be getting attracted to our culture while we are moving away,” he says.

Will this ensure that the rich notes of the sitar and tanpura continue to resound in their place of origin? Or will the farmers have to face the music?

Gurvinder Singh is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.

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