AN EAST-INDIAN
DULPOD
“Ivan,
I need your help.” Mark, my jaam tree friend sounded more than a little excited. “My son
is marrying a Goan girl. In Goa.”
“That’s
glad tidings, man!” I said. “Tell me, what can I do for you?”
“The
Umbracha Paani,” he said. “I need your
help. Do you know if I can get a pimperi band in Goa?”
Mark,
to me was the quintessential East-Indian, a true-blue son of the soil -- the
soil being all that land from the three hills of mango trees stretching from
Oshiwara, across acres of rice fields, right up to Caesar Road and beyond, a
place called Kevni Village in Andheri. This was in the late 1940s.
East-Indians
owned every inch of land in Kevni and neighbouring Amboli, all the pretty
cottages and the new bamboo-and-mud ‘chawls’, opportunistically constructed to
house the new Goan and Mangalorean migrants; they owned too the free-roaming
chickens, ducks, pigs and a few guinea fowl, the First Class graves in the
porch of St. Blaise’s Church, and to all appearances, the very church itself.
Before Bal Thackeray could mouth his famous “Mumbai amchi”, one could pick up faint strains of “Amboli
amchi” from these sons and daughters of
Amboli and Kevni.
Mark’s
family however was among the more socially inclusive; their doors open to ‘outsiders’
like me, giving me my first taste of mutton kuddi and East-Indian sorpotel,
his grandmother even sharing with me stories of the plague and fascinating
tales of Kevni’s often-vicious property intrigues.
He
was my first, closest and most durable friend after our family came to live in
Kevni; Mark barely six and I, just six months his junior. We would climb up
Mark’s jaam tree, perch ourselves on two adjacent branches and chat for hours,
discussing in our teenage years, girls, teachers, the books we shared: from
Erle Stanley Gardner, Edgar Wallace and Somerset Maugham to a later phase of
Aldous Huxley, John Updike and the radical theology of Hans Küng.
Until
marriage did us part. We moved to other cities, other countries. A chasm of
nearly forty years; guilt for losing touch and a longing to catch up. We did
that catching up a couple of years ago in Goa.
And
now he, an East-Indian was asking me, a ruddy Mangalorean if I could help him
with this very East-Indian wedding tradition of the Umbracha Paani in Goa!
The
Umbracha Paani is a ritual, celebrated in mock solemnity a day before the
wedding, separately for bride and groom. The word derives from umber, the local wild fig tree, the roots of which give
off a cooling and therapeutic sap. This was supposed to be used in the water
with which the bride and groom would be given their cosmetic bath. Later, with
not many umber trees to be found,
the water was fetched from the village wells. The family danced all the way to
the well, singing traditional wedding songs, accompanied on a gumat.
Today,
with not many people knowing the words of the songs, brass brands are hired to
substitute the words with deafeningly loud trumpeted tunes. We used to call
them pimperi bands, because of the raw
tones they produced, rather like the pimperi flutes which children made from big, brittle leaves.
“Can
you find me a pimperi band in Goa?” Mark asked, sounding doubtful.
“I’ll
try.” I promised. “Should be possible. Scratch a Goan and you’ll hear music,
you know.”
“But
a pimperi band playing East-Indian traditional songs?”
“I’ll
try.”
I
called my friend, Prof. Christo Fernandes of the Goa Institute of Management,
an accomplished violinist and choir conductor. Christo put me on to a friend,
who put me on to a friend, who put me on to Futusch.
“Talk
to Futusch,” he told me.
“Futusch?”
I asked this friend of a friend of Christo’s.
“Futusch,
re. Futusch. Francis. Futusch. Same thing. You don’t know?” He wondered how
anybody could be so dumb.
I
spoke to Futusch, who turned out to be one of those “no problem” Goans.
“No
problem,” he said.
“Can
you play East-Indian wedding songs?”
“No
problem,” he reiterated. I was not quite reassured.
“Do
you know the songs?” I asked.
“East-Indian
songs, no, no, no. I am Goan, re.”
“Then
how will you play them?” I asked, confused. I sang him a couple of bars of Maaza
Combda and Yeh garawari to give him an idea.
“Ah!
Just like dulpod, re. Six/eight tempo.
No problem.”
Nicely
confused now, I asked him if it would be OK if I wrote out the songs and sent
it to him. “No problem,” he assured me. And so, on hand ruled staves, I wrote
out the music of a dozen or so East-Indian tunes and e-mailed the sheets to
Futusch. For convenience I wrote them all in two/four time with instruction to
play them in six/eight.
There
were six bandsmen at the Paani: Futusch on the cornet, a trumpet, two
saxophones, a bass drum and kettledrums. That was no pimperi band. They sounded
more like a refined chamber group. What I had written was the first melody.
What they played was improvised counterpoint around the melody, their Goan
musical instincts embellishing the tunes with impromptu triads and flowing
obligato, an accidental fusion of musical styles. Yeh garawari melded with Undeer mujhea mama and I could swear that I could hear Cecilia
mujhe naum in between the Ee pori
konachee, the sound of mando and Chopin
minuet in one. This was East-Indian music as I had never heard before.
Fascinating.
The
dancers too caught my fancy. Ladies, married and unmarried, young and old moved
their hips and feet to Futusch’s polyphonic East-Indian dulpod. Unfamiliar with
the traditional half-pirouette of the kunbi-koli dance, they stepped across salsa, hip-hop, the twist and gangnam
style. It was an exhilarating and creative performance – all stimulated by that
improvised East-Indian dulpod. Brilliant!
So,
now. The next time you know someone who wants to do an Umbracha Paani in Goa,
no problem. Just talk to Futusch.
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ReplyDeleteNow that the 'invasion' of Goa (land- and culture-wise) is well on it's way, might as well go whole -hog and have Goan-Mangalorean-east Indian music fusion as well, why not?! All ye Futusches and Pedros, behold, in all their creative, susegad glory! Ah well, if you can't beat them, join them. I guess. Ivan,You have scratched the surface and brought out the 'Goan' in me, I'm afraid. Keep the blogs coming in this vein and I will probably be bleeding raw! super blog, keep 'em coming
ReplyDeleteWe'll keep scratching. I'll scratch your Goan back. You scratch the Mangalorean in your husband.
DeleteI lived in Goa for 3 years and didn't know any of it. We sang Undra mujha mama and ghe ghe ghe ghe re in school though. And yes there was a time we took evening boat rides in Santa Monica for a princely rupees 25 per person, where a certain 'Remo' sang 'Chiri biri bee, pa pam po' :)
ReplyDeleteYou took me back to the days of Rosary, Sharda mandir & KV Bambolim. Thank you so much Ivan.
But this was a naughty conjugation of East Indian and Goan. And I'm neither. My wife is East Indian, that branch of Portuguese Christians that opportunistically aligned themselves with the East India Company. The next time you are in Mumbai, you should try and get invited to an Umbracha Pani. Great fun.
DeleteWill do...just saw some videos on youtube. I musssst see Umbracha Pani.
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