Making bitter gourd sweet

Chhaya Ubale remembers her mother’s singing at the grindmill – ovis and folk songs that encompass the joys and hardships of familial relationships

“My mother sang many songs, but it is difficult for me to recollect them,” Chhaya Ubale told PARI when we met her in Shirur taluka of Pune, Maharashtra. In our quest of reconnecting with singers who contributed songs to the Grindmill Songs Project (GSP), we knocked on the door of the Pawar household in Savindane village in October 2017. It was a full house with sons, daughter, daughter-in-law and kids.

But we couldn’t meet the singer Gita Pawar who had passed on four years ago. It was left to her daughter, Chhaya Ubale to recall her mother’s singing for us. The 43-year-old showed us her mother’s silver jodave (toe rings), affectionately cherished and kept beside the framed photograph.

After trying to recall the ovi she had heard from her mother, Chhaya sang four grindmill songs, which she crooned between two short folk songs, one sad and the other cheerful. She started with a two-line story that extols the virtues of the legendary Savitri, daughter of the blessed King Ashwapati of Bhadra. This couplet was the galaa (melody), to fix a tune for the songs that would follow, a common practice.

In the first folk item, she compares the situation of the five Pandava brothers in conflict with their hundred cousins, the Kauravas, in Mahabharata with her own situation of a lone woman doing daily chores in a very large household. She evokes devotion to Vitthal-Rukmini of the temple in Pandharpur and likens the deities to her own parents. Chhaya’s voice chokes at the mention of her mother and father, and she can’t stop the tears flowing down her cheeks. As if on cue, there is a sudden cloud burst and heavy rain beats noisily on the tin roof of the house.

In the next stanza, she sings to her brother of the hardships in keeping up with the demands of her four elder brothers-in-law and their wives.

In the four ovi that follow the folk song, Chhaya sings about the love and gifts that a child receives from uncles and aunts. A red tunic and cap that is a gift from the baby’s maternal uncle. When the baby starts to cry, presumably hungry, the singer suggests feeding curd-rice to the kid.

Wiping her tears and recovering quickly from the melancholy, Chhaya ended with a folk number filled with humour: How difficult it is for a daughter-in-law to please her troublesome mother-in-law, who is somewhat like a bitter gourd. However much you cook it, the taste will always be bitter; impossible to make it sweet. We joined in Chhaya’s laughter over this last song.

Folk song:

Ovis (Grindmill Songs)

Folk song:

Performer/Singer: Chhaya Ubale

Village: Savindane

Taluka: Shirur

District: Pune

Date: These songs were recorded and the photographs were taken in October 2017