A rain-washed dusk slowly settles over the street as the first strains of the ‘Abhangs’ begin to be heard. Slowly at first. Then the pitch rises to the accompaniment of clanging ‘Jalras’ and temple bells.
Inside the hall, the singers sit on the floor on blankets reeling out the ‘Abhangs’ (Marathi bhajans). A harmonium, a brace of tablas and the hand-held ‘Jalras’ - cymbals - support them. To one side, inside a tiny ‘Sreekovil,’ the priests perform ‘Abhisheka’ on the idols of Lord Panduranga and Rakhuma Devi (Krishna and Rukmini).
Ask them, and the singers will tell you that none of them is a classically trained Hindustani vocalist. Few among them speak the Marathi tongue, for that matter. But the motley group - the Sree Panduranga Bhajana Mandali - has been devoted to the singing of ‘Abhangs’ of the great Marathi Sants for the past nine years. ‘‘It is a great feeling,’’ says K. Suresh, president of the Bhajana Mandali.
‘‘The group sings in the ‘Varkari’ Sampradaya. This is the only such group in Thiruvananthapuram district and one of a handful in Kerala,’’ says S. Thanu Murthy, one of the singers and an office-bearer of the Kerala Brahmana Sabha (KBS). The singers are all employed elsewhere, but drop everything for an ‘Abhang’ session. ‘‘We can only be considered amateurs. ‘Bhakthi’ alone prompts us,’’ Murthy explains.
Every ‘Ekadasi’ evening and on first Sundays, the ten-member group assembles at the Sree Chembai Memorial Hall, Ayodhya Nagar (inside Fort), to sing the bhajans. Around 250 families who live in the area, and even from outside, attend the sessions. ‘‘The sessions are so popular that there are people who have been attending the sessions without missing a single one,’’ says Prakash, the lead vocalist.
The original temple of Lord Panduranga (Vithal, Vithoba) is in Maharashtra and relates to the story of Krishna and Pundalik.
To understand how a rooted Marathi tradition became popular among the Tamil Brahmin community in Ayodhya Nagar, you have to flip back a few years.
The Bhajana Mandali started in 1996, prompted by Jayakrishna Dikshithar of Govindapura. But the singing itself was inspired by Tukaram Ganpathi Maharaj of Kadayanalloor, near Shenkottai, a chief proponent of the ‘Varkari’ tradition in the singing of Abhangs in South India. In 1999, Panduranga Vittal Das performed the ‘Prathista’ of the idols of Panduranga and Rakhuma Devi.
Recently, the group also brought out a small booklet of 101 ‘Marathi Abhang Bhajans’ in Tamil and Malayalam.