Lifers to enthrall audience with folk songs in Mukta Mancha on June 7 & 8

Six lifers in Dum Dum Correctional Home will create a melodious atmosphere in Rabindra Sadan's Mukta Mancha with their folk songs in a festival organised for correctional services.

The programme will be held on June 7 and 8. The cultural organistaion of the convicts, Muktaberi, will be performing at 6 pm on June 7.

The lifers — Giridhari Kumar, Swapan Sardar, Sujit Dolui, Asim Dutta, Paritosh Ghosh and Sirajul Islam — will be performing folk songs despite spending decades inside correctional home.

All the six lifers had performed earlier once at Rabindra Sadan and their efforts to present folk songs before the people has been considered as a major success in their life. The lifers are now busy with their rehearsals in the correctional home.

It was Roy who started giving music classes to the lifers over a decade ago. Roy said: "Many of the lifers have hidden musical talent and some of them can sing well. Music has worked like a therapy and music to them has become a new expression of life."

Muktaberi was set up nearly a decade ago and the lifers have made a CD which was published by a

private company. It was Swami Divyananda, secretary Saradapith and a trustee member of Ramakrishna Math and Mission who first started working among the inmates of Malda Correctional Home nearly one-and-a half decade ago trying to give them training in vocational courses so that they can have a decent life after they come out of the correctional home.

Taking cue from his success, the state government picked up his scheme and it was practiced in all the correctional homes and sub-correctional homes across the state.

Tapan Roy and Alakananda Ray showed a new path by discovering the musical talent of those kept in different correctional homes. Tagore's Balmiki Pratibha too was enacted beautifully by the inmates of the correctional homes and call shows were held in the districts. Roy said besides singing songs, some of the inmates of correctional homes have picked up playing dotara, dugi and other traditional folk instruments.