The Missing Songsters

Santanu Saraswati

The agomoni singers were once a consonant with the Durga puja festivals in Bengal. Their absence from the festivities in recent years is keenly felt by the traditional Bengalis.

Autumn is undoubtedly the most colourful, cheerful and exciting season in Bengal. Rains have almost ceased, the sun rays though sharp are nevertheless, welcome. The spotless blue sky serves as the ideal canopy for heralding the coming of the daughter—Goddess Durga—whose sojourn is keenly awaited throughout the year. The air is thick with the splendour of Shuili, Sefali and Lotus and a holiday mood steal over everybody.
Preparations for the Durga puja are going at a brisk pace. The clay-modelers and artists are almost through busy putting the last minute touches to their work of art, especially to those, which will go to Europe or America, a thing of beauty and a joy forever, over which they have been working enthusiastically for the past few months.
Young boys are feverishly collecting subscription for the sarbojonin pujas and housewives are on a shopping spree. Employees of commercial firms and business houses (Alas! Not others though) are busy engaged in comparing notes over puja bonus and extra allowances whereas long queues have already been formed before the railway booking centers.
Behind this placid backdrop there has, however, been over the years a steady and unfortunate absence of a particular group—the agomoni singers— who made it a point to visit the city regularly during autumn to sing agomoni or invocation songs on the eve of Durga puja. Small groups of men and women from adjoining districts or even some from the other side of the border had regularly paid their annual visits to regale us with beautiful songs heralding the homecoming of Goddess Durga.
In Bengal, Durga is not the mother, but appears as a symbol of a loving daughter, who comes to spend a few days at her parent’s home along with her children. Many of our poets and composers were prompted to pen down some delightful pieces on this poignant theme—the homecoming of the loving daughter—Durga. The happiness of the mother to have her daughter back after she has been away for a year or so coupled with the sad and tragic thought that the daughter, too, after a short spell of only few days will go back to her husband were so movingly reflected in these soul-stirring songs, sung with genuine warmth and feeling by these simple, uninitiated singers that no eyes remained dry.
And the groups that come almost every year were not just a bunch of singers, but something more. They had become almost a part of the family and a strange nostalgic attachment used to bind the listeners and singers in an invisible bond of mutual love, affection and respect.
The head of the family and often the mother would come and fondly enquire about the last year’s news, activities and developments while the visiting group of singers, too, was no less keen and inquisitive to know about the family highlights of the earlier year. This exchange of goodwill and pleasantries was a unique phenomenon and relationship that was established, was far beyond the reach and conception of today’s highly organized public relation operations.
Eighty-two years old, Fulmala Dasi, an agomoni singer of Ahamedpur village, who uses to spend her life by begging door to door in the village path, believes that the time has been changed. Social pressure and change of economical structure has changed the philosophy of today’s life.
“Ami chal-dal futiye kheyechi, chheleder khaiyechi… ekhon amar chelera o-sob khabe na. Ami ekhono viksha kori, horinam, agomoni so…b gai. Amar chhelera bhuleo opothe jabe na. Ora paisa rojgar korbey. Gaan banchbe ki bhabe?” (I gave my sons boiled rice and pulses by begging, Still I use to beg, from Harinam to Agomoni – I sing all type of songs, but my sons will never do so. They want to do business. How will the song survive?).
“It is due to the changing character of the society, the mentality of the people has been changed. Even the mentality of the contributor, the common people and the way to give contribution to such agomoni singers has been changed. Above all, the successors of these singers and bauls are not interested to carry on with their family tradition, they are now taking more interest to join other professions for earning money. During a research we have found that the young generation of those families are miles away from their forefather’s profession, they are more comfortable and keen to join other fields of making money,” informed Raja Ghosh, a research scholar and senior technical assistant of Rural extension program of Visva Bharati. He added that the conversions of the artists into labour are happening silently.
“In fact this was a traditional a way to spread message of Durga puja – the biggest festival of Bengali life, to the village people. It was also a unique way to express their joy on the eve of the festival,” explained veteran folk singer Amar Paul.
Paul recalled from his childhood’s days, “I used to hear the songs from our parents, granny and grandfather and even aunty. It was like co-related with the kaash and blue sky. I could feel and realize the footsteps of puja by my mind and body in the tunes of Agomoni.”
The new generation singers also feel the loss and trace the cause. “Our mind has been changed. We, the Bengalis, have reached the extreme edge of adoption. We have adopted so much that we have forgot our root, our own heritage. We have changed the entire character of Durga puja and we are talking about Agomoni songs,” said renowned singer Lopamudra Mitra.
She even noticed the Agomoni singers have become very few in numbers. Except the old ones, no new comer was seen in the field to carry out the tradition. She said, “It is true that even cassettes are not marketed on Agomoni songs. If the demand for Agomoni is not noticed amongst the people, why the cassette companies will take interest? We have to think of the modern trend also. We cannot do away with the modernization. Sticking to the past we cannot live. We have to cope up with the age.”
But hopes arose with the folk singer and researcher Swapan Basu’s thoughts. “It’s not lost actually. We have ignored it. Heritage is never lost; it has temporarily been cornered only. It’s right that people don’t take interest on Agomoni now days, as they took 50 years back. The taste of our audience has been changed. But still in some functions I am asked to sing Agomoni, though very few in number. It indicates Agomoni will remain till the Durga puja remains,” explain Basu.
The absence of these simple, unsophisticated singers whose annual visits were keenly awaited is felt with the approaching spell of autumn. Today, agomoni songs can surely be heard on compact discs or FM’s sung by professional and eminent singers like Amar Paul or Sreekumar Bandopadhyay. But are they the same or do they succeed in casting the same spell? One doubts. But then, one has to accept the rude reality that likes so many of the many splendoured things of the past, they, too, have been pushed into the category of “had been”.
Or, may be, the all-consuming commercialism has proved too much for these simple folks while compact discs, loud speakers, microphones—the inevitable—“dhoom machadey, dhoom machadey dhoom”—of this loud and grotesque age have easily succeed in not just silencing them but consigning them mercilessly of total oblivion.
EOM.
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