Teejan Bai claimed her right to sing

One will probably remember the remarkable talent of Chhattisgarhi folk musician Teejan Bai, who died in Raipur on Sunday at 69, as an innate gift. But what was often admired as genius was her extraordinary resolve.

In Ganiyari village, where singing on any public platform was forbidden for women, people didn’t want their daughters to become like Teejan, the 10-year-old, who under the pretext of collecting cow dung for the hearth would escape to the ponds, fields and naalas to belt out the verses of Pandavani — an oral storytelling tradition from Chhattisgarh, where a lone performer combines music and narration to bring a story from the Mahabharata to life. The sun would go down and Teejan would return home, only to be shunned by family and community because she dared to sing a form that was a preserve of men.

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Married at 12, she would run away from her husband’s home at 13 to live alone in a neighbouring village to become Teejan Bai, the first woman to perform Pandavani professionally from the Pardhi community. For decades, one saw Teejan become the Pandavas, Kauravas, Krishna, Bhishma and Karna, shifting effortlessly between characters, conjuring kingdoms and battlefields, with just her voice and an ektara. In the 1970s, Urdu playwright Habib Tanvir, struck by her talent, brought her into Naya Theatre, introducing her to a national audience. She later appeared in Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj and received the Padma Vibhushan and the Sangeet Natak Akademi award. But perhaps her greatest achievement lay in winning the hardest battle to begin with: Claiming her right to sing.