New Delhi, June 23: East Bengal had retained the Calcutta Football League Super Division title and the Left had had won the assembly polls for a third time in Bengal, the previous year. Solidarity had not won in Poland and Tiananmen protests had not yet taken place. Partybaazi seemed like a safe career option for Madhusudan Baul- who had dropped out of Surendranath Law College to look for work in 1988.
He was staying at the YMCA Students’ Hostel, occasionally doing accounts for doctors and singing in trains to make a living, when the SFI called him to speak at a students rally against computerization in Scottish Church.
“They said I was a Baul and I could sing and make people understand why computers are bad. But I didn’t know anything about computers. I went on stage and asked that computers don’t eat our rice, dal, fish or milk like us so how could they harm us. I heard vehicular pollution could make us sick but I didn’t know if computers could,” says Baul who is now a renowned performer.
He adds, “The SFI was enraged that I went on their stage and spoke against their beliefs. They gave me the thrashing of my life and forced me to vacate the hostel. I roamed around the streets of Calcutta for two months looking for work until a friend called me to Delhi. I reached here on the Republic Day of 1989. It was no longer safe in Calcutta.”
Baul landed up at the Mahamukti Dham- a Baul hub in Lakshmibai Nagar in Central Delhi. The singer, who now stays in a temple near Thyagaraj Sports Complex with six other Bauls, says many of them came to Delhi for a better income.
“We Bauls are not accustomed to comfortable living, but we never starve as people always contribute. I have never got as much respect as I get in Delhi, when I was in Bengal. Delhiites had never seen singing and dancing babas,” said the singer who hails from Burdwan district.
Baul has made a name for himself here and has been sent on many tours abroad by the government. The artiste is associated with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
In Delhi, he met the late Guru Byomkesh Banerjee and began his formal training in music under Banerjee and his wife Neelima. For the first two years in Delhi he worked in factories, offices and schools, until he realised that he would only be happy being a Baul musician.
He began hanging around mendicants to learn scriptures and tapasya. “To sing from the heart you must understand the meaning of birth, life and death. The main thing to realize is that you are nothing, the person before you is everything. That is the essence of sanatana dharma,” he says.
He also met filmmaker Muzaffar Ali, who started the Jahan-e-Khusrau sufi music festival in Delhi in 2001. Baul says Ali’s son Murad helped him a lot and put him in touch with Sufi singers in Ajmer and other shrines. Now, he regularly sings along with sufi singers in Nizamuddin in Old Delhi. Known as the Bangali Baul Dada, he’s appeared in Ali’s 2002 film India, Garden of Saints.
“I met didi (Mamata Banerjee) when she was an MP sometime in the mid 90s. I used to land up in front of Bengal MPs houses and sing. Usually they ignored me. When I came to didi’s residence, I heard her tell someone on the phone that she had not come to Delhi to beg, but to fight for the rights of the people. I was impressed,” says Baul.
Mamata gave him letters of recommendation that helped getting him more calls for government functions in India and abroad. Soon his popularity grew and earnings stabilized. He’s married to another Baul singer now and his daughter is back home in Burdwan learning the traditional music.
“Bengal is filled with violence now and we can’t make music amidst violence. I never wanted to back to Bengal after I escaped because the CPM now controlled everything, even the life in my village. They don’t believe in God or tradition or the value of work. But now I miss the fields and jungles and I want to go back. After didi has won I am making plans to return.”
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