Dhriti, who enrolled in a master’s degree programme at our university, had been an air-hostess in her previous birth. And she did look like an ex-air-hostess—tall, slim, and gorgeous. As far as dress sense went, Dhriti was roughly two generations ahead of her time. She was often seen in economical shorts and spaghetti tops, not to mention faded jeans and see-through white shirts.
Soon, she formed an apparently deep friendship with her classmate Keshav, who we called Keshav Da because he was a married man in his late-thirties. The liaison disappointed many, needless to say. Keshav, was short, dark, and fat, but had an intelligent face with piercing eyes and bushy beards. The last object, along with his circular metal-rimmed glasses made him look like a nineteenth century Bengali intellectual who had just materialised form a Rabindranath Tagore novel. He wore parachute pyjamas and white kurtas. When Keshav and Dhriti were together, aesthetically and sartorially, they were a study in contrasts. The odd pair was always seen together, on the campus and outside. Actually, they were a threesome, they had a sidekick too, a thin guy of vague features. But lackeys are not remembered by history, not even as footnotes. I’ve forgotten his name.
Keshav was a touch snooty; normally, he wouldn’t deign to talk to lesser mortals like yours truly. The first time when I had the good fortune was an evening when both of us happened to be customers at Raju’s hooch shop in Goalpara. In winter, Raju sold excellent tadi made of date palm sap at his dimly lit open-air tavern. When we both were sufficiently tipsy, Keshav spoke to me at length. He was an erudite man, I discovered. The light friendship we developed that evening when we were drunk continued in times when we were both sober, unlike what had happened in Chaplin’s City Lights.
I don’t recall who I went there with, but I clearly remember that Ganesh, a familiar Bihari rikshaw puller, was a fellow drinker that evening. I remember Ganesh’s presence because suddenly, he burst out singing a familiar Tagore song, Badal baul bajay re ektaara. Bauls are a sect of wandering minstrels in Bengal; the song is about a baul cloud playing the ektara, a one-stringed instrument, as the matted hair of the sky darkened the world at the onset of a storm. The song was a tad incongruous under a cloudless winter sky lit up by a trillion stars above and a hurricane lantern below, but Ganesh sang it beautifully. His diction was a little rustic, but the tune was perfect. It was one of those unforgettable snippets of time that remains with you for ever.
A few weeks after the Goalpara rendezvous, my friend Dibyen and I were on a bus on our way to Jaydev Kenduli on the bank of Ajay. The local people believe—without evidence—the village Jaydev Kenduli is the birthplace of the thirteenth-century poet Jaydev, who composed Geet Govinda, a landmark on the Bengal literary landscape, in Sanskrit in the 13th century. Jaydev Kenduli is also a religious centre with old temples and several ashrams where thousands of bauls congregate in the Bengali month of Poush (December-January), at the end of which a fair is organised over three days. The fair is actually a carnival of bauls, and it was also believed the best of Indian hemp was found there in happy abundance.
Dibyen, my partner in minor crimes, was thrilling company. A charming fellow, he had interest in almost everything in life. (He is very much alive today. The past tense just indicates I’ve lost touch with him!) He and I wanted to get a taste of baul songs at their authentic best. We also looked forward to smoking grass.
As it was the last day of the fair, we just about managed to find seats on the last row of a bus, which filled quickly. Soon, before us was stood a solid mass of human bodies, mostly male, some of whom were smoking. Because of the freezing draft, the windows had been shut. The cocktail of smoke and human smell created an interesting ambience in the bus.
About half an hour into the journey, I had nodded off when there was a sudden commotion. It seemed everyone was jumping towards the front and left of the bus. Fortunately, any force applied within a moving bus doesn’t have an impact on the bus as a whole, thanks to what Sir Isaac Newton called his Third Law of Motion. Otherwise, the bus would have overturned. What was the matter, had a pickpocket been caught? When I asked someone, the excited man said in the local dialect, ‘Bitichheleto bidi keche go!’ (Oh Dear! That female is smoking!)
Dibyen and me wanted to get to the bottom of the matter, and what did we see? The troika mentioned at the beginning of this story had seated themselves comfortably on the corner seat beside the driver. And Dhriti, in faded jeans and a white shirt, was calmly smoking a bidi, the indigenous cigarette made of unprocessed tobacco and leaves. she was gracefully unaware about the commotion her simple act had created. … Incidentally, that was the last time I saw Dhriti. For some reason, she would leave Santiniketan a few days later, never to return.
*
Darkness descended soon after we walked from the bus stop to the river bank. Ajoy is a mighty river during the rains, but in the winter, water was nowhere more than waist-deep. The wide expanse of sand with a few slender streams were waiting for the holy dip to be taken by a few thousand faithful a few hours later. In the tenebrous twilight on the fairground dotted with trees, shacks, and small eateries, there were thousands of people. All of them except a few like us were children of Rural Bengal. And there was something else.
As I grew up in post-Partition West Bengal through years of refugees, floods, draughts, and near-famines, I thought I had seen poverty, but that evening I realised that I hadn’t. Everywhere in the fairground there were shallow holes of say six by two feet, crudely dug and covered with hay, twigs, and leaves. I had seen nothing of its kind before, and at first, I couldn’t understand what purpose they might serve. The penny dropped after a while. They were temporary homes, not of the bauls who stayed at the ashrams, but of the beggars, who had gathered there in hundreds hoping to cash on the pilgrimage-induced generosity in the minds of the people taking the holy dip. In the biting cold of the Birbhum riverbank in mid-January, they had made themselves the most wretched homes one could imagine. But those wretched of the earth were a side-story in the carnival of music.
The soul of the fair was in the many circles formed by bauls in colourful clothes, who were singing with the accompaniment of an instrument with just one or two strings, and sometimes, keeping the beat by holding ghungroos in hand. Except for the singer, others were smoking grass from earthen pipes, which were passed on to the next person after a l-o-o-o-ng, unhurried puff. The pipe went around; the air was heavy with the captivating aroma of hemp.
After walking aimlessly for a few hours, when Dibyen and I were tired, we sat down in one of the circles and received the smoky prasad when our turn came, no questions asked. We listened to songs by rustic voices that recreated the smell of the Bengal earth and sky. In the dark new moon night, anything outside that circle of holy bliss meant nothing. Gradually, the world beyond receded from our consciousness. What bliss!
The singers were poor men rich in happiness. The exact opposite of the money-rich-time-poor young business officials of our time. The night grew older, but no one noticed. <>
Bengaluru / 22 July 2022
