The boys in Tangra (Source: Express photo by Partha Paul) The boys in Tangra (Source: Express photo by Partha Paul)

The glow of a Samsung tablet lights up Ajay Hari’s face in a dimly-lit room in the sweeper’s colony in Kolkata’s Tangra slum. On screen is a video of a 14-year-old swaying to the chant of Bolo Durga mai ki jai while playing an iktara made of a rusty tin can, as Sonali Bendre, Kirron Kher and Sajid Khan cheer him on. In front of me is a gangly 19-year-old with that boy’s smile. “That was a different time. It was like the whole world was watching us,” says Ajay.

In 2010, when Ajay and his friends took part in the reality show India’s Got Talent (on Colors), it was, as if, they had stepped into a charmed circle. Their music, coaxed out of discarded utensils, bottle caps, thermocol pads and metal pipes, was an instant hit. Their energy had the audience on its feet and their humble background was TRP goldmine. In Tangra, every street corner had banners cheering the band, and text messages in their support were typed out in bulk. “We reached the finals because people loved us,” says Sanjay Mondal, 32, the leader of the band. A few days after the show, the band was invited by Salman Khan to play at the launch of his Being Human fashion brand. In one of those surreal, cinematic moments, Mondal and his boys were walking the ramp with Khan. The next day, all leading tabloids of Mumbai had their pictures on the front page.

But that fame came with an expiry date. A day after they returned from the giddy tour of Mumbai, Ajay had to take up a job that his father had wrangled for him, using all his influence: a sweeper’s position in a nearby factory. “One day, I am having dinner with Salman Khan and the next day I am cleaning shit in a factory toilet,” says Ajay.

Mondal (in black) jamming with the band on the rooftop of a Kali temple Mondal (in black) jamming with the band on the rooftop of a Kali temple

On the rooftop of a Kali temple in Tangra, the band has got together to jam. Below us, a lattice of narrow lanes criss-cross each other and then loop back, all roads leading nowhere. Five years after the brief flash of fame, Mondal is struggling to keep the band together. Their number has shrunk from 12 to nine. Life, jobs and disappointment have taken over. But they are here today, their camaraderie evident as the music rings out. Surajit Hazra, 19, and Ajay are on drums made of empty Dalda cans. A year younger, Tapas Hazra plays cymbals made of plates, Pappu Hazra, 16, is on a thermocol drum while Rahul Hari, 16, is playing a sarod-like instrument, crafted of metal pipes. As Mondal signals for them to start, Tapas sets the tone with a loud clang. The notes of AR Rahman’s Taal pe taal ring out. Children stream out of homes and into the lanes to jig to the beats of empty tin drums.

Later, as he leads us through the maze that is Tangra, Mondal points out the highrises that loom over his locality. “Across the streets is the good part of Tangra, and this here the feared slum. There was a time when no taxi would venture here because it was inhabited by goons and mastaans,” says Mondal. He would know, he was one of them. As a boy growing up in a locality where gang wars were (and are) common, Mondal was drawn to a life of violence. “You would see your friends returning with bruises on their faces every day. Some disappeared, never to be found. We were pawns in the hands of political leaders,” says Mondal, whose father was a vegetable vendor.

As a small-time worker for the CPI(M) party, he would be embroiled in regular fisticuffs and fights, tactics that the party members used to wage fear in the area. “I didn’t even know that I was thought of as a CPI(M) member. I would just follow orders of people I trusted,” he says.

Street-smart and restless, young Sanjay was drifting into a typical Tangra life when music found him. “Whenever there is an epidemic of chicken pox in our slums, we arrange a kirtan in our Kali temple. After a performance, the singers walk around the lanes, driving away all evil forces. I loved the sound of the mridang, so I followed the players all day,” says Mondal. He was a teenager when he joined the kirtan group and was soon playing the mridang like a pro, even accompanying funeral processions to the Nimtala ghat. “A theatre group offered me a position and soon I was playing with them. I got to know about a musical scholarship offered by the ministry of cultural affairs, which I won after a gruelling test,” says Mondal. The scholarship gave him Rs 3,000 a month, which for him was a lot of money. “I gave most of the scholarship money to my family and even then there was plenty left. I wanted to ensure that I was doing something to earn it,” he says.

He started teaching music in a day-care centre nearby. “I thought that could stop the kids of this area from various kinds of addictions. Life can be tough here,” says Mondal. Soon, he had a band of 12 teenagers, who would rush to jam with him every evening after school.

For all of them, without a doubt, music was escape. Without it, they would be one of many youngsters who huddle at Tangra’s corners, itching for a brawl, their anger and restlessness not hidden by the faux leather jackets and skinny jeans, or the don’t-mess-with-me look. All of them headed out of homes ruled over by alcoholic fathers, and into a life where the best hope was a government job as a sweeper. “When the show happened, we were almost sure that our bad days are over. We will move away from here,” says Surajit. In his one-bedroom quarter which he shares with his parents and two siblings, there is a little shrine for an assortment of deities, next to which is a picture of him and the group from the India’s Got Talent days.

That hope was the light at the end of the grimy lanes of Tangra, but they are no longer sure they can see it. Surajit, who works as a Kolkata Municipal Corporation sweeper, still has the sheen of someone who has seen a better life. He is wearing a hoodie with Jack & Jones emblazoned across its chest and has his name tattooed in Celtic style on his forearm. He earns Rs 4,800 per month, of which Rs 2,500 is his contribution to the family fund. The rest is for his own expenditure. “One has to spend money to impress girls,” he says with a shy smile. But when you ask him what he really wants, he has only one answer. “I want to move out of this place and live in Mumbai,” he says, desperation creeping into his voice.

Before he joined the group, Surajit found it difficult to sustain a proper conversation with people. “Maybe I didn’t have the confidence,” he says. Amit Hari,18, was a school dropout when he joined the group. Since he had an alcoholic father, who died of liver complications recently, he had to take start earning quite early in his life. “Most grown men start their day with a round of country liquor here. The temptation is too much not to give in,” says Amit.

Akash Hazra, 19, considered the brat of the group, plays out his rockstar fantasy every day: leather jackets, all-night parties and a loyal female following.Of all the boys, he is the only one who can afford not to work and survive on “pocket money”, because his father is comparatively well-off. Right after his India’s Got Talent stint, he was flooded with phone calls from girls and Facebook friend requests. It’s easy to see how Akash, with his disarming smile and tattooed biceps, can charm teenaged girls. “I have 14 girlfriends and they don’t know about each other,” he says with a chuckle. Friends he made after the reality show would take him out for parties, pay for his drinks and lend him their bikes. But Akash always had a nagging doubt. “I would ask them if they would hang out with me if I hadn’t been on television. They never came up with a convincing answer,” says Akash. Today, he has lost connection with most of his rich friends and prefers hanging out with the band members. “I feel only we can understand each other,” says Akash.

It doesn’t take long to decipher that the boys have managed to alienate themselves from most of their contemporaries in the neighbourhood. “They are jealous of us. Whenever they catch us smoking or at harmless adda sessions, they taunt us,” says Tapas.

Mondal, who supplies construction material to building sites to make a living, recognises their frustration. “They are unlike any other boys here. They have seen a better life. They have stayed in five-star hotels. They have travelled in AC coaches in trains. They have flown from Mumbai to Delhi. While most people here have never even ventured out of city limits. In a way, they are misfits here,” he says.

He also knows how easy it is to fall off the straight and narrow track. During the 1990s and the 2000s, Tangra was ruled by criminals. It remains a minting ground for politically supported mafias. “Most of the gundas that these big leaders use come from these slums,” says Mondal. A while ago, Tapas found himself in the police lock-up for beating up his inebriated brother-in-law. “What could I have done? He was hitting my sister in public. Instead of him being booked under domestic abuse, I ended up in jail because my brother-in-law has strong political connections,” says Tapas, who works in the rubber glove factory nearby. Surajit, too, was arrested for beating up another youth. “I had to go to the boy’s family and plead them to withdraw the case,” says Mondal.

Mondal knows it’s not going to be easy to keep the band together. Offers to play in gigs are drying up. They don’t have a regular practice pad, nor the money for a sound system. Many of the young men don’t have the time to jam either after a day of cleaning drains and toilets. “I want them to concentrate on music. But I also realise that a boy from a slum has many odds against him. So I tell them to finish their school, or clear Class X boards if they have dropped out. That will give them a better chance in life,” he says.

For the young men, most of whom have dropped out of school, Mondal’s good intentions are, perhaps, impractical. They remember the time that this slum seemed too little to hold their ambitions and hopes. “People who would once see through us would come up to us and tell us how much they loved our performance. It was like we had been invisible all this while. And everyone could now see us,” says Pappu. The promise of music transforming their lives is now all glitter, no gold. But they are clinging to it.

On the rooftop, the music comes together, fused by the energy of youth, but the songs they sing do not hold the promise of escape. This is the story of a musical band from a Kolkata slum, who held a dream in their hands and watched it slip away.

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