Bengali short film probes the decline of live Dhakis in Durga Puja

A new Bengali short film, Dhaki, The Traditional Drummers from Bengal, turns its lens on a growing cultural tension: the gradual disappearance of live dhak players from Durga Puja celebrations as recorded drum tracks become the norm.

The film follows 70-year-old Tilak Dhaki, who arrives with his grandchildren at a landlord’s house to perform during Bodhan and Sandhi Puja, as he has done for years. This time, however, he is told that recorded dhak music will replace him. Offered some money and asked to return home, Tilak is left confronting the erosion of a tradition he has spent his life sustaining.

In the story, Tilak responds to this dismissal by challenging the loudspeaker itself—beginning an impromptu contest during Sandhi Puja to prove that human skill cannot be reduced to a mechanical loop. The film frames this as a wider struggle between artisanal labour and automation, echoing concerns raised by many real-life dhakis who find themselves sidelined by cheaper, pre-recorded alternatives.

Director Rahul Saha says the film was motivated by the cultural shift playing out across Bengal, where dhakis, once central to the sensory landscape of Durga Puja—are increasingly being replaced by machine-generated sound. Through Tilak’s confrontation with recorded audio, the film reflects on what is lost when tradition is compressed into convenience.

Dhaki positions the issue not as nostalgia but as a question of cultural continuity: whether human craft, improvisation and community presence can survive in a festival environment that is becoming more technologically streamlined.