The Bauls : Troubadours Of Bengal

When I first watched Ritwik Ghatak's Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star), it took me many nights to come out of the melancholy. And the only thing that kept caressing me all through is this beautiful song Majhi tor Naam Jaani naa. It is a bhatiyali folk song of Bengal sung by boatmen while going downstream along the Brahmaputra river. In this epic masterpiece, Ritwik Ghatak transcreates it into a quintessential Baul song with a wandering bard singing this enchanting song with an Ektara in hand. When i close my eyes and listen to it in the darkness of the night, i feel the solitude of the universe descending from the skies and embracing me in its eternal hold. And the longing for a divine consolation would pervade the entire being..

Have you ever listened to a mystical song sung by a celestial minstrel in a garden sorounded by colossally huge and grand old trees on a wintery evening? It is magical. For those magnificent trees can bring the Third Crescent of the waxing Moon and adorn it on the forehead of the singer in all its splendour. I've seen it happening right in front of my eyes. If you do not believe it, you will never be able to comprehend the beauty of that constant conversation between those sagely trees and the flowing wind. When Parvathy Baul sings and dances, with an Ektara in her hand and a duggi hanging alongside, her long tresses start whirling in the air. The voice of Parvathy Baul is the voice of the Gaia, the primordial Greek Goddess of the Earth. It transcends all human frontiers and beckons at the Moon. And then, as though awaiting for such a call for eons, you can see the Third Crescent eagerly reaching out to the plaits of Parvathy Baul and nest in them..

Your flute could not

have its music of beauty

if your delight were not in my love.

Your power is great

— and there I am not equal to you —

but it lies even in me to make you smile.

And if you and I never meet,

then this play of love

remains incomplete..

~ A Baul Song

The sound became the word. And music was born. Or is it the other way round? I do not know.

The etymology of the word Baul is traced to mean - being afflicted with the wind, being restless, being impatiently eager, or, being crazily ecstatic. The Bauls are a product of the creative effervescence between the Bhakti and the Sufi traditions in medieval Bengal. This wandering music cult comprises of heterogenous group of mendicants and fakirs with music as their only source of sustenance. They travel from village to village, with their single-stringed drone called Ektara being a constant companion. It is basically an oral tradition with very little record of their rich folk repertoire. They express their feelings and emotions on life, love and longing in the form of their songs. Lalon Fakir of the 19th century is considered to be the greatest of the Bauls. Rabindra Sangeet of Tagore is deeply influenced by the songs of the Bauls. Of late, Parvathy Baul performs in the Ruhaniyat festivals conducted across the country and has been instrumental in spreading the voice of the Bauls with renewed vigour and vitality. The songs of the Bauls express the spiritual yearning of the human heart to be in communion with the divine. It is essentially a religion of music and love..

Love Eternal : Nizamuddin Auliya & Amir Khusrau

This is what i felt when i visited, for the second time in my life, the Dargah of my beloveds ~ Amir Khusrau and Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi last Thursday evening : That it is only a single dargah even though the tombs of the poet Amir Khusrau and the Sufi saint of Chishti Order Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya are housed in two separate mausoleums within the same complex.

I felt an intense vibe around the tomb of Amir Khusrau housed in the dargah under the embracing branches of a Neem tree. And as it had happened last time, which still remains vivid in my memory, I was not able to feel much around the tomb of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya housed in a separate dargah which is just a little far away from that of Amir Khusrau's. I was wondering why i was feeling a heightened intensity of the kundalini inside the dargah of the disciple and not that of the Master's. Should it not be the other way round? Shanaa had also vouchsafed my discovery. It is not that the antenna of my kundalini is too acute to sniff out the extra-ordinary anywhere. But most of time, it never fails much to the chagrin of Devi and the Others!

It made me to intuitively realise that after the burial of Amir Khusrau, who died within a few months after the passing away of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, Nizamuddin Auliya had secretly decided to shift base on a Moonlit Thursday night during the spring of 1325 AD. On a particular Full Moon night, the ruffling leaves of the Neem tree bursted into mellifluous songs of khayal and tarana so beautifully created by Amir Khusrau. It made the guards of both the dargahs to slowly enter into a trance and they gradually fell asleep one after the other. Nizamuddin Auliya waited till the last guard to fall asleep and then, he quietly got out of his dargah, looked up at the enchanting Moon and ran across to Amir Khusrau to hug him with love, dissolving the grief of separation from each other. Since then, both the master and his most beloved disciple are living in the same dargah of the disciple, continuing to bless the searching travellers with joy and bliss..