Shillong, Oct 14: If the festive Durga Puja is round the corner can music and dance be far away. The two are inseparable. If the idols of goddess Durga are being fine-tuned by the idol makers in Shillong, the music and “dhakis” (musicians) have also started arriving in the city.
A Bangladesh dhakis Md Samsul have crossed over temporarily to India equipped with “skin-tight” dhak, a traditional percussion instrument along with several others to be part of the Durga puja celebration and lend their brand of music in the different puja mandaps . He is not alone as there are several others of his ilk who temporarily ‘crossover’ into India to be part of the greatest festivals on earth – Durga Puja.
Beating their drums, they come not only from the plains areas of the North East and West Bengal but even from neighbouring Bangladesh to reverberate the hills every autumn with the victorious and ecstatic beat of joy – “Tak dhooma dhoom dhum!”
The traditional dhakis (drummers) are the most “welcome guests” in this region during the Durga Puja Festival for the simple fact that there are no ‘dhakis’ in the hills.
“Dhakis, who are the most integral part of the Pujas have to be hired from outside as we don’t have dhakis in the hill areas of the North East except Tripura and Assam,” says JL Das, general secretary of the Central Puja Committee of Meghalaya.
“We are poor and work as daily wage earners or drive rickshaws back home. But Durga Puja is the only time of the year that all of us eagerly look forward to for making some extra money by going to the hills to play the dhak,” says Mahadev Sabdakar of Cooch Behar, who has already arrived in the city with his assistants in his percussion band ‘Sankar Jantra’.
Sabdakar and his associates have been playing the dhak in one of the city Puja pandals for over a decade now. He is among the numerous dhakis from the plains who scale the hills of the North East along with their associates who play other instruments like the dhol, kasi and sehnai every puja.
“And Shillong knows how to honour them,” points out Naba Bhattacharjee of the Central Puja Committee (CPC), which is the umbrella organization of all Puja Committees in Meghalaya. “Every year we organize competitions for them,” he says.
“Imagine, what it is like when 100 odd dhakis beat the dhak at the same time in perfect unison,” says Bhattacharjee.
The unique and immensely popular drum-beat competition held every year is a major attraction during the Durga Puja Festival in the Pine City. -By Our Reporter
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