A real song and a reel.
Tags: Instagram Reels, Culture Change, Tradition, Folk Song

I heard something and saw something today. Obviously, we all do this every day, hear and see. But how often do we experience watching oxymoronic situations and then contemplate about them and disintegrate them later?

There is a very popular Bengali song ‘sohag chand bodoni dhoni nacho to dekhi’ — one that is greatly known to be sung by folk artists, loved by most Bengalis and at least unintentionally heard by those few unfortunate Bengalis who have proudly forgotten the language but make sure to be dressed up during Durga puja in the wardrobe of the most cliché Bengali characters we’ve seen in movies and read in books, you know the usual — a woman in a red and white saree and a man in an unmanageable, crumpled, pleated dhuti with a decadent kurta, almost looking like a groom. I heard this song today followed by an explanation of its context. It literally translates to ‘oh our beloved moon, dance to the song for us to see’.

Several years back in Sylhet, Bangladesh, child marriage was as common as fishing for hilsa in Padma river. Fishing for hilsa happens today too, only a little less to feed every Bengali in the world, because we happen to be everywhere; probably being more in number than the natives of many countries; just as much as our cultural counterpart, who love eating as much as we do only spending probably one fourth of what we do because I strongly believe more than half the money we earn is spent on meat and fish, their by-products and whatever remains. So, the cultural counterpart I mentioned, if you haven’t guessed it already, maybe look at your contact list for you will surely have one you know. Coming back to child marriage in Sylhet, the to-be-bride was often questioned on her skills, mostly those useful to the mother-in-law. We all must have heard the basic, cooking, but the mandate then was dancing. The bride would have to dance to a group of all the women in the to-be groom’s family, the mother, the grand-mother, maybe the great-grandmother and the sea of aunts. The only male presence that was allowed was that of a musician playing the dhol. The lyrics of the song remind me of that momentary puppet play that every child is a part of where the child is the puppet and the parents, the puppeteers asking the child to sing a song, recite a poem, show a practiced dance move when our relatives came over — almost feeling like an audition, only this time you know for sure you’re in the next round.

The child bride was required to dance without lifting her feet off the ground as with older women sitting around, it was believed to be disrespectful. Can you imagine what that dance could look like? I picturize it like a heavy bellied man trying to break dance, his body moving like he was electrocuted and feet twisting as a result. Obviously a thirteen-year-old girl would look much more graceful even if my imagination were true. I find difficulty in getting creative about dance, because I only have the b of dance in me, so feel free to try dancing without lifting your feet off the ground; no one will reject you even if you can’t, for sure.

Today, long before I heard this song, I saw a digital trend raging right now, an Instagram reel. I hardly fancy it. I’m assuming people enjoy reels because technically it is meant to be a visual that deceives your eyes, like magic or circus, we all enjoy that. The reels I have seen so far have been people jumping from one room to another with instant wardrobe changes, sketches transformed into paintings and cookie dough baked into cookies. Haven’t we all seen exactly these before on TV? I remember watching in wonder the costume changes in a dance performance on Filmfare, when Rob from MAD kept step four ready before hand so that after step three he could call it the ‘magic of tv’ and land up in step five because step four would just involve waiting or when Nigella would verbally illustrate a three ingredient no-churn ice-cream recipe and next thing we saw her doing was drizzle something syrupy on top and enjoy it all by herself. These illusions are called reels now, and obviously because every fifth person is doing the same thing and every sixth is enjoying it, and it has a new name, its trending. Afterall, Shakespeare was wrong, everything is in a name.

Returning to the reel I saw today, a skinny figure of a human displaying bags she thinks one should own (the must-haves that hardly anyone has) created as if she was crossing over occasions only, she kept facing her feet to the screen at every change. If the phone was kept too close to your face, it would be a virtual stamp on the face.

Seeing the reel, followed by hearing the song made me start writing this blog! A time when lifting one’s feet off the ground was disrespectful to when brandishing one’s feet to the audience is done so casually, humans have come a long way, not sure forward or backward.