WHEN WOMEN SWAYED TO DRUMBEATS

(ALL WOMEN DHAKI TEAM THIS DURGA PUJA)

Dhak or the Indian drum has always caught on my fascination. Its throbbing elusive rhythm swaying the inner me every time it plays on. Unlike the African or the tribal drum-beats that create an aura of a haunting charm, dhak happens to be one instrument that flows with ease and a pleasure that kicks you to a new height. But what this year’s Durga Puja has to offer is the all women Dhaki team, playing on their beats at a Kolkata puja pandal.

Durga for me is an epitome of female power, where a Goddess has been given the power to put an end to all evil forces when even the Gods failed. In a country where a regular woman has to fight her way through, since childhood to even earn her basic needs, its definitely a welcome change when women are allowed to take up a profession that has all along completely been a male domain.

In India gender bias has percolated on and off even in the arena of performing arts and instruments unlike the West. How many of us have seen women playing tabla or ghatam? Very few. Same with dhak. I have even heard men saying it’s a heavy instrument that has to be picked up on one’s shoulder and played. It’s too much for a woman! I knew such men had never known thousands of rural Indian women who carry greater loads than the dhak  when they fetch heavy vessels of water from distances while carrying their kids on backs or side laps. A dhak should have been easier to handle. 

And that’s what Uma and her band of five women are doing this year at a city pujo pandal. They had started playing in 2011 but none took much notice. It was only after they performed at a TV talent hunt reality show, that they earned the typical hype and publicity that such shows usually bring along. At least in whatever form, Uma and her girl gang of dhakis got their due share of recognition in a typically masculine instrumental world.   

Since the earliest documented puja was organised by Raja Nabakrishna Deb of the Shobhabazar Rajbari in Calcutta in honour of Lord Clive in the year 1757, the men have heralded Bengal’s most important festive season. Coming from rural Bengal with both her father-in-law and husband being well-known dhakis themselves, Uma was encouraged by her father-in-law to start playing after he visited a pujo in the USA as a dhaki. He saw a woman in a New York shop playing all kinds of musical instruments. He thought he should give a chance to his daughter-in-law as well and even made a special light-weight drum of fibre glass to lessen Uma’s burden and help her to play. 

Then some of her neighbours joined. As it’s always in Indian society they got a stiff resistance from the villagers who tried to point out that women performing before Maa Durga is against scriptures. Little did they realise almost all Hindu scriptures have always celebrated women power. But Uma was hell bent to learn and so was her father-in-law who felt if all over the world women can be performing artistes then why not in India. Now they have more than 25 women who are taking dhak lessons from Uma to become full time dhakis. For women like Sumita it is also a source of sustenance after she was abandoned by her husband with two sons to raise. Music and empowerment has surely come hand in hand at last.