Damon Murmu, who passed away in July 2021, was a skilled Chadar Badani performer and Banam player. In fact, he was the sole performer from all of Dinajpur.
Damon became properly acquainted with the unique puppetry form of Chadar Badani only when he was in his late forties. He had first witnessed this intriguing performance as a young boy and the desire to learn this form stayed dormant for forty years almost. His teacher was a distant uncle, Chhotka Tudu, originally from Dumka, whom he met by chance in 2001. Damon watched with fascination as Chhotka carved small wooden dolls and chose to stay on in his uncle`s village of Parbotipur in Uttar Dinajpur. For an entire year, until Chhotka`s death, Damon worked in the fields as a daily wage labourer along with his uncle during the day, while learning from his uncle, both the craft of Chadar Badani and the songs, in his free time. Side by side, he also learnt how to craft and play a dhodro banam from his talented uncle. He soon got the hang of wood crafting, and with his mentor by his side, he also began to carve unique rahi chaudals, which are palanquins for the bride, essential at Santal weddings.
Practising constantly, Damon decided he was ready for an audience and started making tentative visits to nearby villages as an itinerant puppeteer. The villagers were thrilled with this unique form of puppetry accompanied by Damon`s songs and gladly rewarded him with rice and vegetables. Gaining confidence, Damon started visiting villages with his puppets more regularly and continued to do so, till his passing.
Damon first came to the public eye after his meeting with a local government official, Gokul Das, who gave him numerous opportunities to perform around Dinajpur. He later visited Kolkata several times for small events showcasing Chadar Badani and also received a couple of awards in recognition of his art. However, he mostly roamed around the villages of Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur all year long, barring the monsoon months. He would be out performing, during the traditional Santal festivals of Dasae and Sohrai in particular, which take place between October and January, singing the songs of the season or the very popular genre of Dong songs (wedding songs). He had also added a few popular Bengali songs to his genre, reflecting what he had imbibed from societies other than his own, possibly from the villages he visited.
Continuing to use the puppets he had crafted in 2001,
Damon`s constant lament had been that nobody wanted to learn the art from him. It would take him one day to craft each puppet from gamhar wood. He had, in fact, a gamhar tree growing in his own backyard, the wood of which he had used. Unfortunately the tree no longer existed when we visited him. Damon also showed us an incomplete but exquisite rahi chaudal that he had begun crafting. He had been unable to complete it however, for lack of gamhar wood.
In the last couple of years before his death, he had been the subject of a documentary film which received a lot of media attention in Kolkata. Damon, who was a widower, cultivated a little rice and corn with the help of his daughter and her family, who lived with him and helped look after him. His meagre earnings notwithstanding, Damon`s passion for his art continued unabated. That is, until the Covid lockdown...
The lockdown has incapacitated him physically, emotionally and financially. And by the following year, he was gone.