A Call From The Past
Photo Credit: Shome BasuThe other day, we were walking in the filthy streets of Bowbazar, despairing for the women to be working in such appalling, unsanitary conditions.
As we waddled through narrow lanes covered in monsoon slime and moss, edifices shaky, toilets dank and dirty, and a bazaar of noxious scents assaulting our nostrils, I asked my guide if these quarters were once the balakhana (kotha) for mujras.
She said it was unlikely, only sex-work thrives here.
So I said there must be someone here who wants to sing and dance.
She said I was being a tourist.
I stopped walking. I heard a sound; an answered prayer revealed itself above my head, in the leaky tenements we were crossing.
It was the rhythm of ghungroos tied to a girl’s unshackled feet.
Can you hear that? I asked her to stop and listen.
She did.
The music stopped.
She walked.
The rhythm picked up where it had left and walked with me.
The girl is practising, I thought, or is it me hearing the muffled sounds of my unbidden past?
