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Teejan
Bai & Ritu Verma
The Pandavani singers
Ritu Verma with her son Mahesh
Photograph
by Preeti Verma Lal From as far as memory can stretch,
every occasion was a Pandavani occasion when men of the village gathered to narrate
the story of the Pandav brothers in their inimitable style. There never was too
much need for accompaniment either, an ektara or a tamboora, a kartal, a guttural
voice and unmatched verve were the bare essentials. There was no need for a proscenium
either, all the world was the stage for them. For generations Pandavani remained
confined within the village precincts and continued to be a strictly male preserve.
In Chattisgarh,
Pandavani never needed an alibi. From as far as memory can stretch, every occasion
was a Pandavani occasion when men of the village gathered to narrate the story
of the Pandav brothers in their inimitable style. There never was too much need
for accompaniment either, an ektara or a tamboora, a kartal, a guttural voice
and unmatched verve were the bare essentials. There was no need for a proscenium
either, all the world was the stage for them. For generations Pandavani remained
confined within the village precincts and continued to be a strictly male preserve.
Until Narayan Das Verma transformed Pandavani into an art that could be
performed on the stage. Jharoo Ram Dewangan picked up the threads from Verma and
it was because of them that Pandavani metamorphosed from being a village necessity
to a folk art that now has several takers.
Teejan
Bai:
While Pandavani was just about fluttering
out of the chrysalis, little Teejan was picking up the first inflexions of this
traditional art form. Ganiyari village, some 14 kms north of Bhilai, never saw
much riches, the families subsisted on minimums though some did send their children
to school. Not Chunuk Lal Pardhi and his wife Sukhwati. In their household there
was just enough to keep the hearth burning, education was a luxury but Pandavani
was a way of life. Growing up amongst four siblings, Teejan Bai often heard her
grandfather regale the family with the stories from the Mahabharat. Teejan, not
even 12 then and already married, was enamoured by the folk art. She picked up
the basics and trained informally under Umed Singh Deshmukh.
At 13, she
gave her first performance in village Chandrakhuri (Durg) for a whopping ten rupees.
"What
made you break the male bastion and take to Pandavani?" I ask her as she
lay ill in her recently built pucca house in Ganiyari. "It is god's gift,
nobody can do this on his own," affirms Teejan Bai. It was an extremely difficult
journey strewn with sarcasm and jeers.
"My parents did get daunted
by all this but I always fought back." Between creating a niche for herself
and braving the taunts, Teejan Bai was also scraping through bad marriages.
"Indian
women have this amazing ability to tolerate things, keep the pain to their hearts
and continue doing what they are supposed to do, I did exactly that," says
Teejan Bai, her eyes laden with pain and the perseverance that has always held
her in good stead.
From Chandrakhuri village and a payment of Rs 10, Teejan
Bai went to perform in several countries abroad and was honored by the Indian
government with a Padma Shri and a Padma Vibhushan.
Living in Bhilai with
her family and grandchildren, Teejan Bai says she is not tied down by any habits,
nor has any regrets that none of her children have taken to Pandavani. "My
students will carry forward this tradition, what if I my children won't. Art cannot
happen unless Ma Saraswati blesses you".
Ask her what part of the
world is her favorite and pat comes the reply, "Paris."
That
cloudy August afternoon, when I waded through nallahs and sloshed my shoes in
mud, Teejan Bai was not her usual self. Her voice was feeble and I had to sit
on the floor to hear her, she was barely audible.
As I was about to leave,
I hear a ghungroo clink from under the jaded blanket. I ask Teejan Bai about it,
she smiles and shows me her new broad silver anklet. The gleam in her eyes return,
the gold rings in her brown fingers glimmer once more, the betel leaf stains her
mouth, but nothing engrosses her. She touches the anklet and smiles again. You
know that's her heaven. Ritu
Verma:
While Teejan Bai was breaking the male bastion, a fair, dimpled
girl was born in the house of a poor carpenter in the Ruabandha slum in Sector
10 of Bhilai. Raubandha was no different from Ganiyari, there was poverty, squalor,
illiteracy, jeers, just enough for the hearth, yet a lively tradition of Pandavani.
As a child the fair, waif-like, dimpled Ritu Verma would often pick up
a stick, pretend it is a tamboora, gather friends and tell the story of the Pandavas.
Her father believed that his daughter was blessed and gifted but he did not know
the world beyond Ruabandha. But Fate intervened when the carpenter went to a Pandavani
singer's house to repair his charpoy. The singer was looking for disciples, the
carpenter offered his daughter.
Life, for Ritu Verma, changed completely.
Like Teejan Bai, Ritu Verma also adopted the Kapalik style of Pandavani,
where the singer improvises considerably, as opposed to the Vedmati style where
the singer sits and narrates the stories. And when barely seven, Ritu Verma performed
in a nearby village. There has been no looking back for her since then - at 13,
she went to Japan as part of a Pandavani party and since then has performed in
several countries.
"I had not even seen a train before flying to
Japan. I was scared in the flight, but I really liked Japan", she remembers.
Her most cherished memory is buying a dress material from Japan and getting a
frock stitched soon after her return.
By the time she was in her mid-teens
Ritu Verma was an established Pandavani singer but there was a storm brewing in
the Ruabandha basti. The carpenter's golden goose had fallen in love with a Marathi
basti-mate and when they announced their desire to get married, Verma's family
filed a complaint with the local police and the couple hogged enough newspaper
headlines.
"But we were determined to get married," reminiscences
Verma while hugging her son Mahesh and coyly covering her pregnant body. Verma's
husband quit his job in the bank to travel with her and also manage her itinerary
and finance.
Ritu Verma who loves enacting Draupadi's cheerharan in her
favorite blue sari and black blouse is content with whatever life offered. But
she is waiting for the Bhilai Steel Plant authorities to look into her job application.
More importantly, she is waiting for her son to grow up so that "he could
go abroad to study and become a big officer."
For the dimpled girl,
that would be more important than repeating Draupadi's cheerharan, it would be
her grand finale. She waits to sit in the gallery and applaud.
Published
in Discover India magazine, September 2004 |
