I asked Debdas to tell me about his childhood, and how he first came to meet his friend, and taking another puff of his chillum, he began his story.
“I was born in a village about fifteen miles from that of Kanai, not very far from Tarapith,” he said, exhaling another great cloud of smoke, and passing the chillum to Kanai’s waiting fingers, and helping his friend lift it to his mouth. “But we were from very different backgrounds. My father was a purohit, the Brahmin of the village Kali temple. My father and I always had very different values. He was obsessed with his idols and his round of pujas. I was also pious, but I never embraced that sort of ritualistic religion. I didn’t know what was in, or not in, the piece of stone in the sanctuary of my father’s temple: how could I? How can anyone? For me, from the time I was very young, the company I kept was always more important to me than idols or rituals, status or material comforts.
“My best friend was a little Muslim boy, Anwar. His father made beedi cigarettes at the other end of the village. My father would smoke the beedis, but before he lit them he would always touch them against cow dung to purify them. He would pressure me not to mix so widely, and if I drank water in a Muslim house, he would make me have a bath before he let me inside our home. There was a house of some Bairagi sadhus in the village who sang wonderful Baul songs, and Krishna bhajans, and my father didn’t like me going there either. I even shared cigarettes with the [untouchable] Doms who ran the village cremation ground. Even when I was very young, my mind was full of doubts about all these boundaries and restrictions my father thought were so important.
“It was the songs of the Bauls that lured me towards their path. In our locality lived the great singer Sudhir Das Baul. One day, the schoolmaster invited him to come and sing to us on the feast of Saraswati Puja. I was thirteen or fourteen, and then and there I lost my heart to his music! He had such a voice, and such spirit: he could take a rasa to its very essence.”
“Oh, he was marvellous!” interjected Kanai, leaning forward, sightless eyes gazing upwards, with folded hands. “What a voice!”
“It was after hearing him,” said Debdas, “that I made up my mind to become a Baul and sing the songs of Krishna. After some time, I went and visited him at his home, and told him I wanted to learn music. So Sudhir said, ‘If you want to become a Baul you must attend the great festival at Kenduli.’ He called it ‘the great festival of the Enlightened.’ He told me the date—it’s always at the middle or towards the end of January—and promised to take me along.
“I knew that my family would never allow it, so when the day came, I climbed the walls of the house and slipped out without telling anyone where I was going. I had agreed to meet Sudhir at the station in time to catch the 4 a.m. train to Shantiniketan. From the station there we walked on foot to the mela.
“The mela was beyond my dreams: you can see for yourself what it is like. The atmosphere was wonderful—the music-making, the dancing, the rapture, the matajis putting hair oil on the babajis, the intoxication of the madmen, the joy, the freedom … I drank in the pure life of those Bauls, and understood for the first time the real pleasure of living. It made me yearn to roam through the world and escape from my village life.”
“And you never told your parents where you were?”
Kanai giggled.
“Wait,” said Debdas, smiling. “We’ll come to that.
“For four days I walked the lanes of the festival, happier than I had ever been, meeting the Bauls and learning their songs. On the fourth day, as everyone began to pack up, I asked Sudhir Das, ‘What do I do now?’ I hadn’t left my parents a note—nothing. He advised me to go back home quietly, and he took me back on the train, holding my hand to give me courage. We parted at the station, and I headed home. But I was frightened of what my father would say, so I doubled back and went to the home of my Muslim friend, Anwar, and ate there.
“By now it was dusk, and it was only after dark that I finally headed back home. Nobody said a word as I walked in. In silence I washed at the pump, but just as I was entering the house, my father stopped me and asked me to sit in the courtyard. My mother understood what was about to happen, and called me to join her in the kitchen, but just then my elder brother, who was the village police chief, blocked my way. He shouted at me that I had dishonoured the family, and that I was a good-for-nothing who only mixed with Muslims and vagrants. He said that he would teach me a lesson that I would never forget.
“He had his lathi with him, and he began beating me with it. My father joined in, using his wooden slippers. For nearly an hour they both beat me—it seemed like much longer, at that age things hurt more—until eventually the neighbours had to come and separate us. Then they kicked me out of the courtyard into the street. I sat there shuddering with tears, hurting both inside and out. There were welts all over my back, my shorts were torn and my shirt was covered in blood.”