Should we credit the strength, skills and physique of wrestlers to their mothers? Yes, suggests Shahubai Kamble of Nandgaon village in Pune district, in her ovi in this instalment of the Grindmill Songs Project, singing about a wrestling match between a maternal uncle and his nephew
A young lad wrestles with a much older man. The boy wins and the older man accepts defeat. The man is the boy’s considerate maternal uncle. This is the opening ovi in a set of six sung by Shahubai Kamble of Nandgaon village in Pune district.
In the second couplet, we learn that the wrestling match is held in an open space. The boy’s mother, protective of her son, says to her brother, “Take care of your sister’s son.” In the third ovi, the match takes place in the difficult terrain of the Sahyadri hills. Friends in the audience tell each other that this doesn’t matter because both the uncle and his nephew are “master wrestlers, sons of a mother and her daughter.”
In the fourth couplet, halgi (frame drums) in the audience go “tang! tang!” to cheer the wrestlers on, and friends ask each other, “Who is this wrestler’s mother?” It is interesting to note that there is no mention of the wrestlers’ fathers in these songs. The credit for the strength, skill and physique of these men is given to their mothers, who gave them birth, who nurtured them.
In the last ovi, Shahubai asks about the man singing in the fields at the edge of the village. It is her brother, she tells us, teaching her son (his nephew) to sing.
