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AWESOME: Ranjit Chitrakar and his son Shahjahan |
They belong to a community of folk artists and musicians called the Patuas or the Chitrakars.
Traditionally they sing as they unfold a roll of hand-painted pictures about the life of Krishna, Durga, or the snake goddess, Manasa. Curious about the ways in which their lives had been impacted by larger social transformations, I decided to conduct an oral history interview. Ranjit learnt his craft from his father Khadu when he was 13. He was taught to make dyes from plants and vegetables, and later to compose songs and paint the scrolls.
Ranjit's ancestor, Sarat Pal was an image-maker by profession. He would make images of the goddess Durga and Kali for the local zamindar in Jessore - now in Bangladesh. But he also painted scrolls and wandered from village to village singing the stories. Wealthy villagers would buy their scrolls, but ordinary folk would listen to their singing and pay them in kind - rice, vegetables, new clothes. "At that time," Ranjit tells me, "there was no television or cinema. This was the only entertainment for the village folk."
In 1947 Ranjit's ancestors had come to Mahisatala in West Bengal to make images of the goddess Durga. But with the Partition of India, their village had become part of East Pakistan. They could not go back. They stayed on in Medinipur and after a while gave up making images, focusing on their scrolls. The most popular songs that his father composed after independence were about the effects of a changing economy on family life. These were contemporary songs about the fights that broke out in poor families over buying luxury goods - such as a bar of scented soap or jar of face cream or snow as it was called.
The spread of cinema and television to small hamlets affected these entertainers adversely.
"People no longer want to hear our songs from the Ramayana, Mahabharata." Ranjit tells me. His own children are so taken with film songs, that they have neither the ease nor the facility to compose their own songs.
Occasionally, the government asks them to paint a scroll on malaria or HIV. Shahjahan tells me of a song he wrote about the pulse polio vaccination. I had not expected these simple scroll painters to have a song and a scroll about 9/11. But they do. Then in 2004, they had composed one about the Tsunami.
Ranjit's stories are fascinating and his energetic singing about gods and goddesses, undeniably charming. So my astonishment knows no bounds when he casually tells me that they have been Muslims for more than three generations now.
"We converted to Islam during the Nawabs rule in Bengal." That is in the eighteenth century. "But we are different from other Muslims - we celebrate Id, of course, but we don't read the Quran. Nor do we go to the mosque. We have our own place to pray." I think Shahjahan senses my amazement and tries to explain. "You see we are in the middle - we are neither Hindu nor Muslim. We are like Lalon Fakir - the great Baul singer who also said that he was neither Muslim nor Hindu, but just a human being."
I can't help asking, a little incredulously, "How do you sing these stories about the Hindu gods with such ease?"
Ranjit's eyes twinkle in response, "That's part of our tradition. My father taught me these songs and he learnt from his father." It struck me that Ranjit had defined in simple, yet precise terms, what tradition means to Indians.
