Blind Samiul raises family on flute songs

Did you ever consider how the rhythmic rattle of a train is a kind of percussion? As town-and-country landscape rushes by outside the window, to the train's steady movement and with that familiar ta-tum-ta-tum-ta-tum repetition it can feel rather meditative. It's what makes train travel special. Oftentimes, all that's really missing is some sweet melody to accompany the base.

If the train is travelling anywhere near Jamalpur or Mymensingh and you're lucky enough, you might just catch the melody too. Samiul Haque, often known as Thandu Miah, from Kushulnagar village in Jamalpur's Bakshiganj upazila, is a fifty-year-old blind man who earns his keep by entertaining passengers with enchanting flute songs. In the whole of his life there's never been a day when he simply begged.

Last Thursday afternoon The Daily Star met him on the Mymensingh-bound Teesta Intercity service from Jamalpur. “I like to play the songs of Abdul Alim, and baul songs, especially those composed by Shah Abdul Karim,” he says.

“My daughter Jannatul Ferdous is an intermediate student at a college in Bakshiganj while my son Jahangir Alam studies in class nine at a local high school. My mission in life is to support my children so they can achieve higher education. For my children I absolutely do not want a life that's as painful as mine has been.”

It's the wafting notes of his mesmerising flute melodies that promise to make his dreams for his children become reality.

Samiul is a mostly self-taught flautist who started learning the instrument from a young age. He had some lessons from one Sukur Miah of his locality and later studied for short periods under a number of baul artists including Ustad Moniz Miah of Phulkarchar in Bakshiganj and Ustad Monir Miah in Dhaka.

“I don't always play on the trains,” Samiul explains, “I also stay in Dhaka where I can earn up to Tk 500 per day from busking on the city streets. Now and then I accompany baul artists to the capital, often on national holidays like Pahela Boishakh, the Bengali New Year. They usually cover the travel costs.”

“The pressure of family expenses became especially burdensome ten years ago after the death of my parents,” Samiul explains. “My father was a deed writer at a Bakshiganj sub-registry office; both of them used to help me financially. But since then I'm running the family on my own.”

“I do get Tk 600 in disability allowance from the government,” he adds, “but nobody can run a family on that.”

Despite his hardship, in a way Samiul is yet fortunate since where pension runs outs he's found his flute songs can take over. And through his days of music and struggle he's providing his children with a priceless gift: the education that will hopefully make their lives even more fortunate than that of a blind man armed with flute songs. It's almost a type of welcome percussion to the melodies of their own lives he's giving them, a rhythm that's far more soothing than even the sound of a train.