THE BALLAD OF HORI DASI

Since 1967,when Baul singers Purna Das and Luxmun Das featured on the album cover of Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding,the West has been fascinated by the mystical world of the bauls and their rejection of the mainstream. The bauls subscribe to a philosophy that does not acknowledge caste,creed and social hierarchies,and is similar to the syncretism of the Sufis.
The 39-year-old woman speaks flawless Bengali,her voice is stirring,a mix of yearning and detachment. It’s startling then to discover that she was not remotely interested in singing while in Japan.

Her journey followed a different route. “I was in my twenties when a film festival in our city showed all the films of Satyajit Ray. I was introduced to the nuances of Bengali middle class living,rural Bengal and the sub-cultures of the state. I can’t say why,but I was fascinated,” she says.
Several years later,a post-graduate course in cultural anthropology reconnected Dasi to Bengali literature and culture. “I read a lot of Tagore at that time. My professor in Japan was doing his research on folk traditions of Bengal and had been to places like Shantiniketan and Bankura several times. His essays added to my interest,” says Dasi.

She packed her bags in 2003 and flew down to study Bengali language and literature. She soon found herself attracted to the bauls,their nomadic ways and their earthy music. Satyananda Das remembers spotting her for the first time in a baul mela held in Sriniketan,near Shantiniketan,‘roaming around carelessly,almost like an eccentric woman’. “She had even put up with a baul family,started playing the dotara (a string instrument used by the bauls) and whiling away time at akharas,” says Das. “Though I was used to the erratic ways of foreigners by then,having played at various melas,I thought she was mad at first,” says Das. That elicits a chirpy bout of laughter from Dasi.

What drew her to this way of life? Life in middle-class Japan,says Dasi,is a constricted one,stifled by etiquette and conventions. “We didn’t learn to eat noisily,laugh loudly baring our teeth when we were growing up. It wasn’t a part of our culture then,” she says. Something in her went against that grain. When she discovered the openness of the baul world,she says she found a new direction. “It’s a more giving world and it also made me discover music,” she says.

Despite that,a formal initiation into the baul community took her time. “After the initial fascination wore off,I realised not all bauls practice the detachment from the material world and involvement in music they preach about. Several also try and swindle unsuspecting people and a single woman,not familiar with the surroundings,is as susceptible to misleading crooks,like anywhere in the world,” says Dasi,who is among a small but growing number of women singers in the once largely male-dominated world of bauls. After she met Das,she says her faith was restored. “He has had never received formal education but his understanding of life was profound… he was exactly like what I had read about bauls in Japan,” says Dasi.

She says she loves the simplicity of this life,the absence of social obligations and classifications,the unhesitant devotion to music of the soil but some things refuse to change. “She has still not grown out of eating with chopsticks. She can play the khonjoni (cymbals),the ektara,she can’t still eat with her hands. She even eats peanuts with chopsticks. I tried doing that once,and wasted an entire evening trying to size up a peanut with sticks,” says Das with a laugh.

Does she miss life in Japan,the one she was used to for 32 years? She takes a little time to answer. “I have committed myself to this life so deeply that such thoughts don’t come to my mind often. But my grandmother is very old and I have to go and meet her at times… though after I had sworn in to this life I am not supposed to have familial ties anymore,” says Dasi. When she is in Japan for a performance,her parents try and meet her. “Initially they weren’t very sure about my decision,but they wanted me to do whatever made me happy,” says Dasi.
As of now,she is busy getting her notes right,translating baul songs into Japanese,and taking the art to more people. “The baul songs talk about an ideal world… without caste,class,material obsessions. They talk about a beautiful life,I want more people to hear them,” she says.