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Life isn't such a song for them
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The Patuas of Midnapore are keeping one of the oldest audio-visual storytelling mediums alive, giving the oral tradition a contemporary twist with stories of 9/11 and the tsunami, finds Bhumika K.
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if you don't have a song you are not a Patua bahar
Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
SOULFUL STORIES Bahar and his sons have numerous tales to show and sing
Ranjit Bahar Chitrakar got lost the last time he came to Bangalore. So he painted the sad tale of how he roamed the streets seeking help from people who didn't understand his language, took an auto and landed at a Bengali association, traced painter Paresh Hazra (the only name he knew in Bangalore) and finally reached the art gallery that had invited him, late at night in the big bad city. He sings his song to go with the story and points out as he literally unfurls the story on a long colourful scroll.
The story that unfolds is an epitome of the gullible and vagabond life of the Patuas, the painter/singer folk artists of Midnapore in Bengal, who are clinging on to this tradition of making patt chitra despite the poverty it brings with it. Barely making ends meet, and figuring out how to afford their meals every day, they continue travelling from village to city and village again, especially during festivals, for a few rupees or something in kind.
Fifty-two-year-old Bahar and his sons Sahajan and Siramuddin Chitrakar are in Bangalore's Right Lines Art Gallery to display their patts or scrolls and tell their stories. The stories are many ("I haven't counted how many I know" says Bahar with a semi-toothless grin) and an interesting mix of mythology, legend, the freedom struggle, and a social commentary on the times — including movements for literacy and against dowry, and even stories of modern daughters-in-law who go to the movies wearing trousers, defying the mothers-in-law!
A lot of the content of his paintings is dictated by his audience. "People want to see and hear about the latest event. It's a natural curiosity, isn't it?" says the simple, diminutive man in a tattered and soiled dhoti-kurta. Bahar cannot read. He doesn't own or watch TV. He gets people to read the newspaper for him if he's curious about any event, and examines the photographs.
His mud hut back home in Naya village that houses 15 family members does not have electricity. And he doesn't want it either because his neighbour's son got electrocuted soon after they got a connection.
When he was on a tour in a village soon after the tsunami hit the Asian region, village folk asked him if he had no story to tell them about such a big event. So listening to people's stories and newspaper reports read by friends, he gave his son Sahajan ideas to paint. So they have a tsunami story scroll. Even 9/11 was a story relevant to the people in the villages of Bengal, so he told them Osama's story and of the war thereafter.
When he breaks out in song, Bahar's voice, with its rustic charm and steadiness, recalls S.D. Burman's. Even if one does not understand the lyrics, one is all ears.
He excitedly shows me a patt he is working on — this is based on the story of a Muslim girl in a neighbouring village who won a court battle to become the qazi at the mosque after her father's death. Bahar's story begins with how girls in the village are being told to get themselves an education. Women of the Panchayat have passed a resolution that all women must get job opportunities; some are going to college now and one has even become a doctor. "Someone is going to make a film about the girl who has become the qazi. They want me to show the painting and sing the story," says Bahar.
Their village has a primary school, and of late many Patua children are going to school, inspired by the success story of four young women who took their stories to Australia and Edinburgh for international cultural festivals. "People in the village now say `It's okay if we starve, but we will send the children to school'. You get knowledge going to school."
He himself couldn't send his sons to school because they didn't have money to buy books. "But education is not everything," Bahar hastily adds. "I can remember every song my father taught me and create new ones, without writing them down. My sons can only learn the stories I teach. They don't have the capacity to create their own. I have given them my songs recorded on tape for them to learn. Yet they only want to listen to Hindi film music."
Nevertheless, the boys want to stick on to their art. They also believe they will not get any other job because they aren't educated, and have no money to start their own business. Sahajan even has his passport ready but hasn't had the chance yet to go abroad.
A full scroll can take anywhere between 20 to 30 days to paint. They still make and use vegetable dyes derived from soot from their lamps, vegetables, leaves and fruits, unless someone from the city asks for one to be made with fabric colours. Sahajan feels guilty using fabric colours as it's against his parampara. Bahar doesn't like them because they don't have the subtlety of the natural colours and are too bright for the eyes!
At Dilli Haat and at craft melas they sometimes earn up to Rs. 30,000. But there are times when they go for days without selling anything. So they oblige when they get orders to paint their stories on saris and kurtas. Better that than go hungry.
The Patuas, who also tell stories from the Hindu mythology, are Muslims. Bahar says his forefathers were Hindus before they converted. But they don't really follow any Islamic practices, except praying at the mosque. But these same Patuas are the ones who make clay images of gods and goddesses for temples and puja pandals.
Despite their travels and experiences, they remain gullible. A bag containing over 40 of their story scrolls got stolen on the train journey to Bangalore. Will that be Bahar's next experiential story-painting? As he himself explains, the difference between a Patua and any other painter is that "if you don't have a song you are not a Patua".
You can catch the artists in a live performance till Thurday evening. Right Lines Art Gallery is at #270, 1st floor, 1st Main, Defence Colony, Indiranagar. Time: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Contact 25272827/41154142.
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