The Baul's passing

HE was truly a monarch in his realm of melody. For Baul Samrat Shah Abdul Karim, music was all. It was music that welled up in the soul and remained evocative of the soul. Now that he is dead at ninety three, the music becomes a memory and the man rises to a crescendo of transcendence in the human consciousness. It would be superfluous to suggest that Shah Abdul Karim is now set to become a legend, for legend is what he rose to being in all the years of his striving for the Creator, for his land, indeed for the universe. There is something about baul music that takes its notes, its inflections and its nuances toward a wider space; and doing so, it resonates in the hearts of those who feel it brought to them on the waves of the wind. Karim sang in the fields, under the trees and on the banks of the river as an adolescent. As time lengthened itself in his life, nature became part of his being. It expanded and widened his reach. For those who heard him, they felt their own world taking on a larger dimension.
That was Shah Abdul Karim. He touched lives even as his fingers constantly strummed the ektara, that symbol of soul music so emblematic of Bengali culture. Of course, it was not an easy ride in life for him. Poverty kept him rooted to the harsh realities of existence. He worked in the fields and then, for a pittance, at a shop. Education, a difficult proposition for him considering his state of penury, stopped when he was informed by the school authorities that pupils were expected to serve in the First World War. One looking for peace of the soul could not indulge in the horror of war. Karim never went back to school. And then there was the obscurantism that forced him out of his home at one point. He refused to be defeated, though. The passing years were to be a serialized enumeration of his victory over adversity. He ended up composing no fewer than a thousand and a half songs, besides producing his publications. His songs energised politics in the times of Suhrawardy, Bhashani and Bangabandhu. In every sense, he was a self-made man, one who looked destiny in the eye and shaped it to his own specifications. He probed the soul.
We mourn Shah Abdul Karim's passing. Such a one as he comes but rarely in the lives of nations.