Cassette industry plays on grief, cashes in on quake

Cassette industry plays on grief, cashes in on quake
DHARMENDRASINH CHAVDA

ANJAR, FEBRUARY 18: Outside Anjar's damaged Jesal-Toral Ni Samadhi, where there is a row of kiosks selling cassettes, huge speakers blare out the stories of the earthquake, heart-rending scripts delivered in sombre voices. Visitors ask the shopkeepers to play them before deciding which one to buy.

Audio cassette firms are cashing in on the quake even before the rubble is cleared. A week after the earthquake, around eight cassettes hit the stands, each trying to depict a gorier picture of the earthquake.

The titles are direct and meant to lure the buyers: one is called Bhukamp No Prakop (The Fury of Earthquake). The story is delivered by Shantibhai Vatalia and Rekhaben Rathod and the cassette jacket shows a collapsed building.

Another is Bhukamp 2001, showing on the jacket a picture of a mother and child weeping and the tale here is told by Mangal Gandhi. Yet another is called Bhukamp No Hahakar (Terror of Earthquake), brought out by Rajkot-based Ashok Sound.

The story is rendered in the Kathiawadi dialect and told in the folk tradition of the region, the cassettes are spiced up enough to appeal to the people. One begins from Anjar itself and describes how a rally of 400-odd school children were parading through the narrow road of Khatri Chowk, when the earthquake struck. After saying this, the story-teller stops and there is a loud sound of thunder, followed by shrieks of buried children crying ``bachao bachao.''

Then using a brief silence to symbolise the funereal devastation, the narrator resumes on a sister asking what she will do on the Rakshabandhan day without her dear brother. Again and again, the narrator seeks to know from God why he unleashed such tragedy on the people of Kutch. Another cassette implores the planet to relent and stop shaking.

They are selling like hot cakes. ``I sell about a 100 cassettes daily,'' says store-owner Bhupesh Puri, as he obliges an old woman to try out all the cassettes before she decides to buy Bhukamp No Prakop. ``This one is the most popular,'' he adds. All the cassettes are priced at Rs 25.

Says Bhukamp No Prakop producer S.D. Satani: ``There was a demand for such cassettes from the people who did not experience the earthquake or did not see the devastation.'' He said he brought out 10,000 to cash in on the market. ``We were late. By the time we brought out the cassette, there were already four in the market,'' he said.

Narrator Arvind Barot says that his cassette was different from others. ``I have not made it melodramatic. I have just kept it to complaining to God why he did this to the people,'' he says. He adds the profit from the sales would be donated to the earthquake relief fund.