First of all, this novel by Sharad Singh is not just a novel
but a very
good research work on unique Bedia community.
The Bedia community of Madhya Pradesh state’s Bundelkhand region,is the
community where birth of a girl child is celebrated in a big way. As the girl
child could only bring good fortune and hope for better future for the family.
Why so?
The women of Bedia community are known as Bedni.Bedni women are, in fact,
professional folk dancers and singers. They usually visit all over the place or
sty at a fixed venue to perform dance and singing to earn their living. These
Bedia women are really beautiful and dress gaudily to attract potential clients.
They perform Rai dance-a traditional folk dance form, and sometime behind these
shows they get involved and indulged in flesh trade and petty thefts also!
defferent from other wandering community the prostitution isn’t considered as
the bad thing rather it’s respected as another source of income and rated as
the traditional profession. Although, it’s wrong to say that most of the Bedia
women are prostitute and involve is petty thefts. But when a Bedia woman
crosses her age or suffer an economic crisis they do go and resort to such steps.
According to the novel Bedia community had adopted Rai folk dance form as their
profession in order to establish themselves in the Indian society. Generally a
Bedni woman can join this profession just after their first menstruation. They
are not allowed to drift away from here and do anything than dancing and
singing as their livelihood. And of course the age old tradition and thick
dense environment at home and society do not let go anywhere else.
According to Indian constitution the Bedia community comes under the
schedule cast category. The writer of this novel-Sharad Singh has taken some women
from this community as the characters of her novel. She introduces a
village-Putaria which is a village of
Putarias.The Bedni women are also recognized as
Putaria and Nachnari(The dancing women.)This village, as the writer informs
also works as the red light area of that region, apart from a venue of song and
dance shows. The writer traces back the origin of Bedia in 12 century. The
title of Bedni was first given to them in year 1916.This novel is written in a
very descriptive and interesting manner and tells the past and present life
style of these women. Whatever the condition they had had to face centuries ago
continued in the initial periods of 21st century too!
This novel has lots of women characters whose murky past, tragedies,
traumas and troubles of the day to day life, are the main storylines of this
novel.
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