In Search of a Sufi’s Soul

Staff Writer - New Ind Press - Chennai, India
Monday, October 16, 2006

To chronicle Mohammed Sabir Baburaj is to be doomed. It is to walk, rather fall freely, into nothingness. He sang and conquered a million hearts, but died uncared for and a pauper.He was a marvel of creation, but of a God with a cruel sense of humour. Whenever we thought he was moving up he was actually slipping, down into a mysterious void. There was, perhaps, something eternally elusive that Baburaj was trying to get hold of through his music. And Dr Prasad, in turn, was in search of the elusive soul of the musician with the ever-wandering heart of a sufi through his 45-minute documentary Awargi prouduced under the banner of Damn Rain Theatre.

In this pursuit, the director didn’t seek out Baburaj’s ancestral house or his school. He was not even interested in the musician’s struggle to make it to the top or even his family. It was as if Baburaj and his music was a timeless presence, just like the sea or wind or the rain.Awargi, borrowed from the title of a Ghulam Ali ghazal, is Persian for mystic wanderer. Dr Prasad, therefore, just walked with his hand-held camera through the places once frequented by Baburaj. The Kozhikode beach, Mananchira Square, the Gujarati Street, toddy shops... A stunning series of visuals that evoke both melancholy and nostalgia is the result.

Incidentally, Dr Prasad himself cranks the camera. There is a long shot of a girl in the Kozhikode beach, lonely and forlorn in the rain, looking deep into the horizon. Two Muslim women just turning round the corner of the Gujarati street, leaving the place painfully desolate.

The image lingers long enough to instill an incurable sense of yearning. The sea waters crashing mercilessly on the last standing remnants of an old sea bridge. And in the background, the soulful voice of Baburaj sings Pranasakhi njan verumoru paamaranam paattukaran.The unflinching courage of an irredeemable loser. And along the way, the camera bumps into those who hold Baburaj dear to their heart.They whisper, at times sing and even perform, to the camera. In a medieval-looking house with an old type-writer machine, Clarence Issac sings in his pure deep voice the charming Kanethu kalathu kalbinte maanathu/Karmukil moodi kazhinja nerathu.

It felt as if he was trapped in the sixties, still wrapped in Baburaj’s embrace. Razzaq, a sufi who used to accompany Baburaj in his travels across the country, moves his fingers desterously over an ancient-looking harmonium and croons the complex Hindustani number Jeevitheswarikkekuvanoru premalekhanamezhuthi... .“Who would have dared to make such kind of music during those times,” he asks, his voice trembling with pride.

The harmonium is a constant presence in the film, its black and white sounds a metaphor for the musician’s brooding soul.

Yesudas, in the form of Prem Nazir, is shown singing Jeevitheswarikkekuvanoru... , interestingly the only film clip in the documentary.The legend’s voice was like the printed word, perfect and clear. That of Baburaj, Issac and Razzaq felt like the hand-written word, raw but infinitely more authentic. The director also gives in to the belief that it is in the toddy shops that the spirit of Baburaj rules.There is a shot of youngsters, liquor in front, singing Pranasakhi njan verumoru paamaranam pattukaran as heavy rain hammers the roof of a toddy shop in Kozhikode.

Hold the images, the sounds and the songs in the cup of your hands and you might get a glimpse of a delicate incandescent soul caught in the vicious currents of life.But towards the end, Baburaj is brought to life and put within the confines of time and space when an admirer, tabalist Hari Narayanan who was the hero of John Abraham’s Amma Ariyan, speaks about the composer’s death.A single column news of his demise in the front page of Mathrubhumi daily appears on the screen.

The fantasy of immortality abruptly comes to an end.