Once prisoners, they strike the right note in Tihar jail
JAILHOUSE ROCK They come together to form the 14member Reform Band NEW DELHI
: For allegedly stealing ₹60, Rahul Nataraj spent around three years in New Delhi’s Tihar jail. He was cleared of the charge in April last year and released.
Another 28-year-old spent three years in jail for the suspected rape of a woman, who is now his wife. Released in 2012, he says pressure from her parents, who opposed their marriage plans, forced her to file the rape complaint. Accompanying the two men is a 26-year-old, who had once accidentally hit a friend on the head. The blow proved to be fatal and he served four years in prison before being released.
The three have one thing in common apart from having served prison time. They are part of a 14-member band of musicians, who call themselves The Reform Band.
They met in jail, realised they all loved music and formed the band in April this year. The band, which plays pop and Hindi songs, has since performed five gigs — all at functions organised by departments of the Delhi government and one by Delhi police.
“Life in prison is tough, more so if you know you have been wrongly arrested and do not deserve to be behind the bars. But then we found music. Actually, we found out what we could be,” says Nataraj.
The group is now preparing to turn pro by performing at weddings and parties for money, said Naresh Baisla, who runs an organisation that teaches music to and trains jail inmates in other activities inside prison. He was the man who brought the band together. “The wedding season will start soon. It will be a debut for the group. They are professionals and will make money from their performances,” Baisla said at a practice session of the band inside the prison.
The 14 members of the band may have left jail long ago but come to visit it almost daily because prison authorities have allotted them a room in at the staff quarters to practice.
Baisla said the band would charge around ₹40,000-50,000 for every performance and is willing to travel outside Delhi to perform.
“Most of them are young men, who spent the prime of their life in prison. Instead of ruining their lives, they came out motivated and ready to start a new life. We are only helping them,” he said.
The band’s lead drummer, the 26-year-old cited above, was a shopkeeper until he found himself in prison after accidentally killing a friend.
“I used to play the dholak (a folk instrument) at social gatherings. I played really well. My friends would ask me to play at parties. When I came to jail in 2009, I was depressed. For a few months, I did not know how I had landed there. The jail had then started music classes. I met a friend and he showed me a drum in one of the rooms. I started hammering it and enjoyed it. I found it similar to a dholak,” he said.
Inside jail, the 28-year-old man became a trained drummer. “Jails change you from within. Good or bad, you end up becoming a different person. I became a drummer,” he said.
The man said he participated in the jail’s talent hunt contest Tihar Idol, started on the lines of the reality show Indian Idol.
In Tihar, the country’s most populated prison, jail officers organise recreational activities such as Tihar Idol to keep prisoners occupied. Spread across 400 acres, the Tihar jail complex has over 15,000 prisoners.
“For every prisoner who sang in the competition, I played the drums. I remember journalists like you came and took our photographs,” he said. Two recently released Hindi movies, Qaidi Band and Lucknow Central, featured prisoners who perform music, but The Reform Band claims to have been inspired by neither .
The former is about seven innocent prisoners who form a band that becomes a sensation on social media; in the latter, a group of prisoners plot their escape by forming a band to participate in an inter-jail music competition.
Baisla ,who organises music classes, claims that over the last three years, he and his team had trained at least 400 prisoners who now make a living by playing music, singing or dancing at shows. “All these years the jail authorities were training prisoners and giving them time to devote to their music. Prisoners played in jails at functions, but it was limited. Earlier this year, we discussed with senior prison officers about bringing all such trained prisoners who had been released under one umbrella and starting this band,” Baisla said.
The band also has trained dancers. Rahul Nataraj is a dancer. “We are a talented lot, sir. When our customers pay for the band, we will give them a package. There will be singers, musicians and also dancers,” Nataraj said.
Before his arrest, Nataraj worked as a cook at an eatery in northwest Delhi. “The cop who arrested me from the road showed he had recovered a cell phone and ₹60 from me. Why would anyone steal ₹60? If I was a thief, wouldn’t I have stolen ₹6,000 or ₹ 60 lakh,” he says.
Nataraj says he gives dancing lessons to slum children in Shakurpur Basti of northwest Delhi. “When I am not practising with this band, you will find me giving slum kids dance classes under a flyover in Shakurpur,” he said.
Dheeraj Bajaj,47, was arrested in a property dispute case and between 2011 and 2016, he spent about 27 months in prison. A commercial designer who offers desktop publishing services, he says he has always been a fan of the legendary Hindi film playback singer Mohammed Rafi.
“Music to me means Rafi. I am a singer and was among the top 16 contestants in Tihar Idol. I come here to sing beside them because it is my passion,” Bajaj said.