Door ballaai tsajiyo
Mauj balaai lajiyo
Mol goyyo gaamun
Su haa iyee shaaman
Tamiss balaai tsajiyo
Mauj balaai lajiyo.
(May you be saved from all the evil
Your mother will to protect you from it
Your father has gone to the village
And shall return in evening
May he be saved from all the evil
Your mother shall protect you from it)
The first songs we hear…
It wasn’t until I became a father that I realised linguistic retention in the face of cultural pressures was an active pursuit, not only at literary and political levels, but also at tender but incredibly deeper levels of emotional continuity in form of folklore and the first songs we hear: The lullabies.
From my own childhood, one of the most vivid memories I hold together is of my grandmother reading a padsha kath to me or singing to me.
My grandmother passed way 25 years ago but whenever a reference is made to her, it evokes a piercing nostalgia of the moments she would hold me—a memory woven from the gentle murmur of generations, where I felt safe held in the arms of a fading world, a fading cultural space.
Mol ha goyi gaaman guthan
Dodhe vuthan lagayo
Faresh thovnaai karith kuthen
Dodha vuthan lagyo
(Your father went to far of villages
My life sacrificed for your milk suckling lips
He did flooring for you in all rooms
My life sacrificed for your suckling lips)
Kingsley Davis, an American sociologist described culture as the hallmark and single most important factor that sets humans apart from the rest of life forms.
However, culture in isolation will die down, if means of its transmission from present to future aren’t defined.
Not only that, in absence of the process of “Culturation”, an individual may be left out from the social web falling apart, confronting individuating isolation, as confronted by apes, zebras and other biological families throughout their lives.
It has so happened that humans have been creatively inventive and at times this creativity has bordered on evolving a symbolic universe of meanings in parallel to the natural universe of Quantum and Quarks.
In the domain of culture and perpetuating the phenomenon of culture, humans have evolved the ingenuously unique form called lullabies – the words pored into the child’s ears in the earliest hours of his life.
Lullabies are songs sung to babies in a particular timbre to make them fall biologically asleep, and to simultaneously awaken social and anthropological sense of their existence.
Content is continuity when it comes to lullabies and the timeless myths and realities are tailored to the social and cultural motifs to impinge of child’s “slate of mind”.
The child effortlessly participates in a timeless realm and the spatio temporal sociocultural structures are present to his nascent thought in a timeless structure of symbols and universal archetypes.
The lullabies sculpt an emotional landscape of the child’s mind long before he can speak. The rhythm and poetics of the songs, in addition to providing attunement, foster secure attachment through predictable and gentle vocal interactions.
The maternal prosody regulates emotion and identity, becoming the first bridge between the baby’s self and the other, between solitude and connection; its melodic cadence rooting him/her not only to his/her mother but also to the culture she embodies.
Bishta byor aavyo
Shihij nender paavyo
Khand ta naabad khyavyo
Bishta byor aavyo
(The mewing cat will come
Will make you sleep tenderly
And will get you sugar and candies
The mewing cat will come)
These form an intimate and lasting part of oral tradition and serve as the vessels of cultural wisdom.
They convey values, traditions and even subtler forms of resistance across generations. Through them the child absorbs something essential: the perception of who he is, serving as the foremost anchors of identity.
Nikas saal mataamaal
Nikas saal mataamaal.
Tsrinda-grindum ta monga daal
Okhoon sahbas khatanhaal
Nikas saal mataamaal
Nikas saal mataamaal.
(Feast for my baby at his maternal home
Feast for my baby at his maternal home
Tasty dishes and moong dal
My Akhoon sahab’s cricumcison
Feast for my baby at his maternal home)
These melodies often refer to local traditions and familiar symbols like ‘matamaal’, ‘khatanhaal’, softness of pashmina, the cold water of Jhelum, in addition to local customs, agricultural life and seasonal rituals.
They do more than soothing: they familiarise; embedding an idea of space in the mind of the toddler. A map a heritage is drawn on his psyche even though the outside pulls towards forgetting.
Cradle bound poetry serves as a potent means of language learning by exposing a child to the native vocabulary very early in his life.
This is further reinforced by emotional encoding of the language structures. These language structures are not passive, but rather instinctive melodious initiations into the common linguistic awareness of the child with his historical homeland.
The metaphor wrapped language lays a groundwork for imaginative and poetic consciousness.
The tradition of prayers, hymns and invocations weave divine presence in the earliest sensory perceptions of the baby.
The stories of saints and prophets and allusions to right and wrong, incorporate ideas of morality through soft repetition. The cradle becomes the first mosque and mother the conduit of faith, leaving strong moral impressions on the mind of the baby.
Dherre Dherre honyo tchheniyo nass
Be ha gindh pananis nika laalas
Dherre dherre honyo tchheniyo nass
(Shoo Shoo barking dog let your nose be cut
I shall play with my beloved little pearl
Shoo shoo barking dog let your nose be cut)
These songs often narrate the stories of hardship, hope and resilience, critisizing oppression through allegories.
The subversive storytelling cloaks protest as poetry, weaving itself into the tales of birds and mountains, passed from mother to a child in a hushed tone and preserving the ache of longing.
The mother sings of a dog, a trickster animal, a season wasted or a father that doesn’t return from a far of village; the metaphors for disappointment or peace or separation.
Unfortunately, the modern voices have drowned these ancestral tunes. The cultural space once vibrant with bassinet bound poetry has grown silent and its silence has shifted the emotional landscapes across the urban and rural life of Kashmir.
The decay of language at its very roots diminishes spiritual literacy and leads to a moribund historical amnesia. The children growing up within conflicting identity narratives end with up with burdens of fragmented belonging.
The identity slips away unnoticed and the cradle is becoming a quiet witness to forgetting.
To reclaim your identity is to revive your scattered language: one lullaby at a time.
