The folk singer and lost tales
At a stone’s throw from Chandigarh is village Manakpur Sharif that houses a 194-year-old dargah of a 19th century Sufi saint, Hazrat Hafiz Muhammad Moosa Chishti Saabri. It also holds the graves of his 25 followers inside its precincts behind an imposing gate and a large step-well facing the gate. I first visited the village in 2002. I had read about a folk singer named Pala (Harpal Singh) who lived there. Just out of film school, I was setting out to explore the oral ballad traditions of Punjab. I was taken in by his easy-going oratory and conversational skills. He could not read or write, but had a sea of knowledge about cultural history, wisdom and a repository of oral tales or kissas.
We became close and I visited him frequently, travelling with him to various fairs and shrines, all syncretic in character. Sometimes as far as Rajasthan for the folk deity Gugga Pir’s fair where he narrated the legend of Puran Bhagat, a disciple of Gorakhnath. There were no religious boundaries. Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism and their various subaltern and folk expressions co-mingled at these shrines and fairs. Sometimes it confused me beyond comprehension, having been brought up understanding the strict regimentation of all religions and their beliefs. The reality beyond the big cities was something else. We, the big city people, had been compartmentalised and ghettoised.
Accompanying him always was his supporting singer Sher Khan, plucking the twin-stringed toomba, and Mahinder, an algoza player. Pala led the storytelling, while simultaneously playing the percussion instrument dhad. That was the tradition. Three performers formed a group: the leader (aagu), the support vocalist (peechu) and the twin-flute (algoza) player. Performances would run through the night, sometimes consecutive nights till an entire ladi (string) of a legend had been narrated threadbare. Copious amounts of tea kept both the performers and the listeners awake through the night. And an occasional beedi too.
Catching up with Pala last week after many years in Manakpur, we sit under the peepal tree inside the darbar, as the faithful call the dargah. He has turned 70, but nothing seems to have changed in his demeanour. I ask him if his memory is still sharp and if he can recall all the lengthy tales with equal ease. “I remember everything. And even if I forget something, I try to recall it early in the morning. It comes back automatically! But I cannot say for how long I will remember all this.” His partners are no more. There is no one of their calibre to take their place. “I keep getting invited to perform. But no one has learnt from me. People who knew this way of life are no more. It’s almost come to an end. Many singers go about displaying their fancy toombas. You dig deeper and they know nothing. There can be no in-depth learning without an ustad. I stayed for 15 years with my ustad Kundan Ram of Sirhind. I looked after him and he taught me with so much affection and dedication. When I left him, he blessed me: ‘I am not Kundan anymore. You are Kundan from today. Go perform.’ Thanks to his blessings, even if I have to sing continuously for a month, I can. Many kissas can take up to three-four days to be narrated in detail. There are three kissas of Puran Bhagat alone. A long tale of Hazrat Ali. Similarly of Bibi Kaulan, Tara Rani, Raja Harichand, Dulla Bhatti, Mirza Jatt, Jeona Maud. We learnt these old tales which were popular among the people of Punjab. Also love legends like Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnu, Laila-Majnu and Sohni-Mahiwal. We intersperse our performances with these wherever appropriate.”
Ask him about what he thinks of the new songs or styles of singing. “Other singers make fun of us wherever we go. All they can do is show off their new instruments. Is it easy to sing one legend continuously for 12 hours? I challenge them if any one of them can do so. I am willing to drink water from their slippers!” He bemoans and shakes his head dejectedly. “I tried my best that at least one person could learn from me. These are priceless things written by our poets. Though I have many followers, they are all educated and don’t have time to invest in such a demanding tradition. They did not even write down what I know orally. The kissas I narrate were never published in books. My ustad had learnt from his ustads. That’s how this tradition has sustained. We did not take even a rupee from our ustad when we performed with him. Today they discuss money first even if they know nothing.”
A man of Pala’s age has been sitting next to us and listening carefully to our conversation. He intervenes: “I have read a lot of these tales when I was small. My father used to ask me to read them as his eyesight was weak. But what you sing has a different flavour and that’s why we enjoy it so much. We don’t get that flavour by reading in books.” Pala becomes even more animated. “When we sing the kissa of Tara Rani and narrate the episode of her son’s death, the audience can’t hold back their tears. Women start wailing. Specially people who have had a tragedy in their family or lost a child, just can’t take it. It’s a tale of sorrows. Not just the listeners, even we have tears in our eyes. The episodic ladis we sing have been re-written and re-told by our own poets in the recent past. The ones you read lack that intensity.”
He rattles off the names of the poets who have written the ladis that he sings: Badardin and Sadardin of Ludhiana district, Umardin of Moosewala, Khalil of Kherian. They all migrated to Pakistan at the time of Partition. “They were ustads of our ustads. They used to write and sing themselves. They were highly educated, having studied up to 14 levels of Urdu. They had such ‘high brains’ that no one today can imagine things the way they did. They used to write as if they saw the thing happening with their own eyes.”
“One day, Badardin was leaving to go perform somewhere. Near the pond on the outskirts of his village, a batakh (duck) and a murga (rooster) were fighting. Seeing them fight, he invented a story in his head. When he reached the village where he was to perform, Badardin said, ‘I will tell a new tale today. Of Raja Batakh-sain and Badshah Murg-din. I will tell you about their fight.’ He sang their tale all night. When listeners dispersed in the morning, the ones who were more curious stayed back. Mustering up their courage, they asked Badardin, ‘Ustad, we want to know one thing. To which cities did Murg-din and Batakh-sain belong to?’ Badardin laughed. ‘Go home! It was just a fight between a murga and a batakh!’ Our tales travel straight and endless like GT Road! We are not into short cuts like five-minute songs.”
The elderly used to say: ‘Gaun Ladi Da, Minh Jhadi Da!’ The stringed episodic tales were like the flurry of rain that came down non-stop for days. But the way climate change has altered the rain pattern and intensity, people also seem to have no time or interest in listening, forget about learning, these epic tales.
— The writer is a national award winning filmmaker
