Fair Trail: Surajkund, Haryana
On a hot February afternoon in Delhi I was on a bus to Haryana. All DTC buses don't go beyond Badarpur. Most auto-rickshaws at the border ply on sharing-basis, where you ride with several other people. From a distance, Surajkund looked packed with people, camels and ponies. I saw a few performers and decided to start with a been performance.
Saperas or snake charmers in India went through the toughest phase of their livelihood after the Government of India banned snake charming according to a wildlife preservation act some years ago. Performing at weddings and cultural festivals, recording their music, crafting and selling musical instruments made typically of bottle gourd are how they sustain themselves now. They use four instruments, the been (a wind instrument with open holes like a flute and spherically hollow in the middle), the tumba (a small drum like instrument open at one end and tied to a string), the khanjari (an Indian version of the tambourine) and the dhol (an drum-like instrument that is made of a hollow trunk with animal leather on either sides of the hollow). They make excellent music. I spent about a half-hour sitting in the dust and listening to three arrangements they played.