Tags:
Journalism of Courage
JEJURI (PUNE), FEB 20: In cyber savvy Pune, kids her age are being prepared for school with parents making them parrot their C for computer and M for mouse. But 50 km south of the city, in the temple town of Jejuri, three-year-old Sunanda merrily jingles bells and swings to the pitch of folk songs.
The village children titter and elders stare while little Sunanda immerses herself in a daily ritual. She has known no other life from the time her parents abandoned her at the temple of Khandoba. Nor will she know any other life. Because three-year-old Sunanda, left at the temple steps when she was just 60-days-old, is to be wedded to the lord of Jejuri.
“If Sunanda was my own blood I would never wish this future for her.” This is her foster mother Kaushalya, a murali ceremoniously married to Khandoba at the age of seven, when her parents offered her to the Lord in the hope of a son in exchange. Little Sunanda is following her despite the fact that this practice was banned by the State more than fourdecades ago.
Kaushalya lives with her `brother’ Jagannath, a waghya who are part of 50-55 similar groups of waghya-murali duos in Jejuri today. They burst into a ritual song and dance every few minutes. Often all night long, to ward off the evil eye and bless newly-weds, families, and political heavyweights at the Jejuri temple, in homes, or simply by the customers’ Tata Safaris by the roadside. For anything from a modest fee of Rs 51 to Rs 5000 supari or fee for a single rite called jagran-gondhal.
Witness to this fading folk art is a disillusioned Shivdas Kadam, the town’s most respected waghya, smugly satisfied that his three sons market audio-cassettes instead of pledging their lives to the service of the Khandoba.
“Religion no longer matters to the waghya-muralis now entering the profession, with their eyes set upon easy money with the least efforts,” he frowns. Like the townsfolk who complain that most waghyas today sing in intoxicated stupor ordown the day’s earnings in liquor.
Ironically, while Kadam receives a monthly state pension of Rs 500 for his lok kala, he has shrewdly committed a few of the 350 ballads in his memory, to recording companies for a tidy sum. And a wise investment of a television and VCR rented to townsfolk on lazy afternoons, in a radical departure from custom.
“Our rituals and beliefs are being converted into nothing but tamasha,” says Baburao Ghogare, absolutely nonplussed that his children will not perpetuate the family profession of four generations.
Acutely aware that muralis often end up begging by the temple once age and time ensure their movements are neither dainty nor appealing, Baburao used his temple earnings to educate his daughters in nursing and secure jobs in a government hospital in Pune.
“I am famous,” declares Parvatibai Satpude, the only murali in Maharashtra to play the exclusively male instrument, the Khanjiri, from Pune and Mumbai to Baroda. She has no idea howold she is, but insists that the State has denied her the Rs 500 pension due to waghya-muralis above 60 years.
“None of the present muralis perform the original dance of somersaults, cartwheels and gymnastics that I was celebrated for. Today it is meaningless and filmi. Everyone is after the money,” she grimaces.
These dwindling numbers of genuine waghya-muralis staunchly refuse to pass on the primitive lyrics, music and dance to future generations, for fear of participating in their transformation into commercial displays deprived of the root mythological or religious essence. They would rather hold tight to their talents and watch placidly as an inherent fragment of history dies a slow death.
