Introduction:

“Amay bhasaili re, amay dubaili re,

Okul doriyar bujhi kul nai re”

(You have set me afloat; you have drowned me within,

This shoreless river has no end of its own.)

The words of the song linger on through the waves of the river and its waters even after the majhi^[1], or the boatman, has reached his desired destination. The song which is addressed to the river captures the entire essence of how the river magnifies and manifests the life that the majhi leads while he is travelling through his boat. The river acts not only as his only path of reaching the other shore but also as his muse/fellow companion which enables him to compose the song and sing it in times of intense reflection. The river is not only the witness to the arduous journey that the majhi undertakes but also the foundation of the journey itself. The river, as an entity, defies all kinds of definitions but expresses itself in bits and pieces through these Bhatiyali songs. These songs are highly reflective and immersed in the cultural memory of the people who have resided around these rivers through time. They are expressions and performative manifestations of how the river impacts the people and how the river carries them forward. The argument that this paper proposes is that the Bhatiyali songs are cultures of memory^[2] involving the rivers, residing in the minds of the majhis and people who reside around rivers. The argument revolves around the hypothesis that in the Indian reflective traditions, memory is essentially performative. Memory has no specific origin or end; rather it exists in its articulations. Memory exists in the form of images, texts, idioms, dance forms or song cultures. The repertoires of knowledge that are contained within these cultural forms are intergenerationally transmitted via voice and the bodies of the singers and performers. These songs act as conduits for the reflections to exist and recreate themselves across time.

In order to elucidate the argument, I have divided my paper into three parts. Part one will try to sketch the way in which rivers have been present in the cultural memory of people in the South Asian region across time. Part two will engage in trying to trace some Bhatiyali songs and the ways in which they have portrayed the rivers, and the cultural idioms that associate with them. Part three will be a culmination of all the parts and will try to put forward the argument of the paper in the light of the discussion in part two of the paper.

1. Conception of the River in the Cultural Imagination:

The river, as an entity, has a vastness like the universe. It is not limited within definitions put forth by geography, politics, economy, trade or culture. Rivers are significant for the cultural imagination of the people of the South Asian subcontinent. Cultural markers like the mythological stories of the descent and flow of the River Ganga, the significance of the Sangam^[3] whose water has a holy impact on the soul of the people, the songs telling the story of Sohni–Mehwal created by Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai^[4], or the account of the creation of the Ganga by means of the Bhagiratha myth^[5] as evident in Krittibas’s Ramayana are significant for the existence of the people around these rivers. There are descriptions of the rivers in the human form or a goddess in all the major texts like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Puranas. These descriptions of the river are not absolute. The majhis, who are not in contact with most of these texts due to lack of literacy, do not tell the same story as present in the texts. The concepts and the philosophical ruminations about the journey of the river are, however, transmitted to them by their elders and ancestors via oral means in the form of stories, songs or other cultural forms. The majhi, therefore, becomes a creative individual who engages with his life experience with the philosophies that are transmitted to him.

In this context, the book Ganga: The Many Pasts of A River by Sudipta Sen is of significant importance as it places the river Ganga in the central consciousness of the people. The historical past and the mythological past converge and proliferate through the memory of the people of the communities that reside around the rivers. Sen says, “The cultural memory of the River Ganga dates back much further back than the recorded history of the Indian subcontinent, mired in genealogy, legend, and fable.” (Sen 12) In referring to the presence of the river in the Puranas, he takes the specific example of the Kashi Khanda of the Skanda Purana and says, “According to this text, true pilgrimage resides not just in travelling to holy places such as Kurukshetra, Ayodhya, Mathura, or Dwarka but in the journey that lies within (manastirtha) and guides a seeker toward the path of kindness, sacrifice and purity.” (Sen 28)

The river not only acts as a physical entity but also as a part of the metaphor of life and its journey. It acts equally on both levels of thoughts. This strand of thought which embodies the inward journey (manastirtha) becomes an essential element within the entire knowledge system that emerges from here. The exploration of the physical death of a person as the liberation from the world of illusions(maya) through immersing remains or even offering of bodies just before their death to the River Ganga puts the river in a place of extreme reverence. It acts as the bridge between the mortal life and that which lies beyond. This relation within the journey is also enacted by the physical flow of the river towards an invisible shore.

The river is the witness to the song of the civilization that thrives around it. Therefore, the river forms an integral element of the memory that people carry within their minds across generations. In the context of the Bhatiyali singers, this memory becomes integrally linked with their life lived every moment. It is from here that the analysis of the themes of the journey and the life led in the journey can be undertaken. The journey exists not only at the level of the lived experience but also at the symbolic level of meanings and knowledge transmitted across generations.

2. The River in the Bhatiyali Songs:

“O Padma nodire-

Sarbanasha Padma nodi, tor kache shudhai.

Bol amare, Tor ki ar kul kinara nai.

Nodir kul kinara nai.

Paarer ashay taratari,

Shokalbela dhorlam pari.

Amar din je gelo, sondhya holo

Tobu na kul pai.

Padma re, tor tufaan deikhya poran kanpe dore.

Feila amay maris na tor sarbanasha jhore.

Eke amar bhanga tori,

Malla choy jon shalla kori,

Amar naye dilo kudhal mari,

Kemne paare jai”

The song can be rendered as:

O Padma River-/ O destructive Padma River, I ask you.

Tell me, do you not have any shore of your own./ any shore of your own.

In search of the shore I left home at the earliest, in the morning I got hold of the boat.

My day is gone, the evening has come down upon us,/ Still I didn’t find your shore.

O Padma river, seeing your storm sends shivers in my heart,

Don’t kill me with your destructive storm here,/ My boat is already broken/ Six mullahs have made a deal,

They have attacked my boat with their axe,/ How do I go to the other shore?

As the boatman travels across the turbulent waters of the Padma River^[6], the fear of drowning and not being able to reach the shore engulfs him. The search for the shore is an endless journey and the journey is at once literal and metaphorical. On the literal river, the search for the shore is a difficult task due to the various obstacles which present themselves on the path like the storm and the gushing winds which increase the current of the waters. On the metaphorical level, the reflective tradition of tirtha and manastirtha play out beautifully through the songs. This idea of tirtha which refers to a ‘ford’ or that part of the water that can be crossed in order to go to the other side, manifests itself lucidly when we turn our ears from the Puranic references towards the charming melodies of the Bhatiyali song mentioned by the boatmen of Bengal. Travelling across the river, on the boat, literally as well as metaphorically becomes the focal point of these songs. In the words of Sen, “A tirtha in this sense is a physical and metaphorical reenactment of the struggles of a lifetime.” (Sen 21) The concept of the river being the Bhabasagar, i.e., the ocean of all existence is emphasized in the reflective tradition that emerges in the subcontinent. This ocean of existence is where all action takes place and all the relations between people and places takes form. The cycle of birth, being, death and rebirth exist in this bhavasagara in the Sanskrit reflective tradition. Everything is within this ocean and everything dissolves in it. The literal river, in this case, gets transformed into the bhabasagar where the majhi is in a state of establishing a perpetual relation between himself and the shore (destination). In this journey itself, there are the six ripus (Arishadvarga) symbolized by the six mullahs which act as deterrents to the action that is being established. The majhis are also referred to as malla (denoting their Muslim identity). These Muslim boatmen compose these songs. Therefore, in these songs, the reference to the mullah/malla is not to denote the religious identity but rather a philosophical journey within the mind which is affected by the six ripus. The concept of the six ripus is also a part of the reflective tradition that they carry. These are internal elements which affect the mind of the human being in question. These six enemies are: kama (desire), krodha (anger), lobha (greed), moha (delusion), mada (arrogance) and matsarya (jealousy). These are enemies of our mind. They keep pushing the majhi in the opposite direction of his destination.

In another song’s excerpt,

“Dublo sadher manabtori bhobsagorer pake pore,

Emon bandhob ke ache ar, ke tulibe keshe dhore?

Manobtorir malla choy jona, choy dike choy jone tane,

Keu toh shone na”

which can be rendered as,

The dear body of this boat has drowned within the bhabasagar^[7],/ Who is there to pick me up by my hair?/ The six mullahs of the body of this boat pull from all sides,/ nobody listens to each other. It presents the similar image and motifs that the previous song puts forward. The body of the majhi is constantly pulled within the waves of the bhabasagar. The body is torn apart in this movement and the six enemies (six ripus) act in opposing ways in order to make him lose direction in the journey. The journey is not only the journey to the other shore or destination, but it is also the journey of the mind in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. This cycle is a perpetual one. Similarly, another excerpt from a famous Bhatiyali song,

“Amay dubaili re, amay bhasaili re,

Okul doriyar bujhi kul nai re”,

Which can be rendered as, You have drowned me; you have kept me afloat/ Is there no shore to this endless river?- depicts the picture of the river which is endless and it acts upon the body of the majhi as he travels across. This perpetual journey across the river forms an important strand of thought in the imagination of the Bhatiyali singers. It depicts the intricate way in which the poetic and the philosophical strands of meaning converge together and create an equilibrium within the matrix of the song. The river exists in the mind of the majhi as well as under his boat. The river is not only the source of his survival but also the source of his intense agony of reaching a particular destination or state of existence. As the body of the majhi becomes exhausted by the perpetual rowing, the song sung by him replaces the physical body of the boat with the corporeal body. The physical body, in turn, dwells both in the physical realm and the reflective realm, at the same time. The body has a dual existence. The body is the microcosm placed against the macrocosm that is the universe. In the macrocosm (referred as the Bhabasagar), the body floats endlessly. It passes through cyclical phases of birth, death and rebirth without reaching its destination and is constantly in motion. This constant motion of life in the bhobsagor is hinted at when the singer sings: “Bhanga e toroni tobu bai re”(The body of my boat is broken and still I row my boat). It is inextricably linked with the journey of the majhi, who is in search of the shore of the river. His emotive self effortlessly combines with the reflective self, through his song.  The body of the singer floats on this endless stretch of the water without being exhausted. This journey is the song and vice versa.

3. Bhatiyali: Song of the River (Nodir Gaan) as a Site of Cultural Memory:

Rivers like the Ganga, Bhagirathi, Ajoy, Mayurakshi, Damodar and Kansai flow on the western side of the West Bengal border. Padma, Brahmaputra, Jamuna and Meghna are some of the major rivers which flow through the entire terrain of Bangladesh. The places which are situated along the route of these rivers have to bear the unpredictability of the course of the river as a whole. The river, in general, is the witness to all that takes place. In Amitav Ghosh’s words, these channels are spread across the land “like a fine-mesh net, creating a terrain where the boundaries between the land and the water are always mutating, always unpredictable.” (Ghosh 7).

The word Bhatiyali is derived from the word ‘Bhati’ which means the low lying regions of Bangladesh where rain wreaks havoc every monsoon causing large areas of the land to submerge under water. Scholar Ashutosh Mukherjee cites the regions of Dhaka, Mymensingha, Sylhet and Rangpur as specific regions where Bhatis exist in abundance. (Ahmed 134-135) In these regions, the rivers act as the only means of transport from one shore to the other. The majhis act as the carriers of passengers from one side to the other. The majhis, on their long journey towards the other shore, enter into a reflective mood and continue singing the Bhatiyali songs. These songs reveal the way in which the majhi makes sense of the world around him by taking continuous recourse to the cultural idioms and metaphors. The song acts as the alithic^[8]mode of articulating memory. The body of the majhi acts as the vessel in which the memory is stored and it gets externalised through voice. The Bhatiyali songs have been carried forward by the oral and aural means across generations among the people of this region. Paul Zumthor defines the act of such speech production as an ‘exteriorized interiority’ (Zumthor 8).  

“Ujan ganger naiya,

Tumi koirbani paar, nodi geche koto duur.

Jei kul dhoira chole re nodi, se kul bhenge jay.

Abar aalse ghumaiya pore sey kuler I gaaye.”

The song can be rendered as, O Boatman of this river of opposite currents, /Will you be able to tell me, how far does the river go? / This shore along which the river travels, is breaking apart,/ Again this lazy being falls asleep along that very broken shore. The river expands incessantly in front of the eyes of the majhi. This river is the river of life, replete with instances of complete destruction and also recreation. This cycle is something that the Sanskrit reflective tradition highly emphasizes in all its major texts and oral storytelling. The cycle is a perpetual struggle between life, death and rebirth. The cycle is also depicted by the river.

The cultural idioms like bhabasagor, chhoy ripu, okul nodi, and bhanga tori are all embedded in the memories of the people. These idioms have not emerged in vacuum. They have been present in the cultural memories of people since their existence and have travelled across time. All these idioms and phrases are cultural markers to show how people think in the subcontinent. The language and the vocabulary foray in heterogeneous ways to reveal threads evolving from the cultural milieu that we live in. Here, the use of the specific idioms acts as conduits into understanding how the cultural narratives are stored in the memory of the people. These idioms are gateways to the culture on the whole.

The idiom of the bhabasagar, for example, is a poignant starting point to understand how the river forms an essential part of the imagination of the people. The river is an entire ocean of life and in this ocean; the majhi carries his body (depicted by the bhanga tori) through various trials and tribulations (chhoy ripu) across this river. The body is in a constant state of movement, just like the river in its flow. The movement is not only through life but also across the circles of life in search of a tangible release or liberation from the world of illusions (maya). All these meanings seamlessly attach themselves with the idea of the river.  Like bubbles on the surface of water, which emerge from nowhere and again drown within the depth, the boats are in constant motion. Similarly, the majhi is in constant motion, through his varied experiences and his songs. The journey of his life is the journey of his song as well. The song is in its journey of birth (composition), life (being sung) barring the phase of death. It keeps on being sung as a mode of life of the majhi. Therefore the song lives on, like the river. It is here that the river and the song merge seamlessly. Both constitute each other.

The songs act as mnemotexts. Mnemotexts^[9] are those reflective traditions which get enacted by a particular group of people. In Indian reflective traditions and specifically in the Bhatiyali songs, these texts (in the form of idioms) are constituted by characteristics like citation, ellipsis and allusion to larger texts which constitute the imaginative horizon of the majhis. In the Bhatiyali songs, they repeatedly cite and allude to the metaphorical thresholds of reflection in terms of maya, ripus, bhabasagar and tirtha. All these metaphors/philosophical ruminations are innately connected to the Puranas or the Mahabharata. The thinking and the reflection that the majhi undergoes while being tossed by the waves of the rivers are weaved together with the metaphors that he carries in his memory as a result of his exposure to the culture that he thrives in. These mnemotexts are not limited to a written script; they modify themselves and get enacted through cultural forms. The Bhatiyali song can be considered as a mnemotext carrying the imagination, metaphors and idioms closely linked with the river as it exists in the cultural imagination of the people.

Conclusion

Through this analysis, we see that the river is indeed an essential element in the cultural imagination of the people of Bengal in general and the Bhatiyali singers in particular. The majhi is a creative person (along with being a boatman carrying the passengers) who shapes his language according to the reflective material that runs in his memory, in a verbally and sonically pleasant manner to express his realities. Reality and reflection are bounded in the same thread by the voice of the majhi. The thinking is the being. The thought is the song. The river is the common ground which holds the singer, the thought, the memory and the song together. The river creates the song and the song creates and re-creates the river through its modifications through time. The river is the witness to the perpetual song of existence and destruction. Bhatiyali and the river exist in the same flow, through the same rhythms provided by the waves and currents, and are carried forward by the bodies of the singers which carry these cultural markers within their membranes.