 The abolition of slavery and slave trade created an acute shortage of cheap labour in the British and French sugar colonies. To make up for this shortage, a system of indentured labour was evolved. To forsake a land, community, loved ones and the familiar for an unknown destination and uncertain future. It was a choice made by thousands of people from the Bhujapuri speaking region of India. The compulsions which prompted migrations of people on such a massive scale can only be imagined. In 1793, a single legislation by the British East India Company transformed the way people related to land. The earth which had hitherto belonged to the people now became a commodity which could be bought and sold. By the mid-19th century, British land laws resulted in landlessness on an unprecedented scale. Uprooted and torn from the earth which had once given them sucker, millions were forced to migrate in search of alternate livelihoods. Kuli Ghat, now known as Apravasi Ghat, a narrow gate, a dozen steps. Within a hundred years, 450,000 Indians, among others, passed through and up these stairs. The roof has fallen, the walls are broken, the walls are broken. Mon Gawa is a history of a community in which there are traces of ashes. The seven seas away from the village, which gave them the sweetness of the salt of their sweat, which gave them the heat of their blood, the unknown stone, the stubbornness. This is why the seven seas away from the village can be their home. The extent to which the trauma of migration permeates folk consciousness is reflected in the fact that the songs of bards like Bhikari Thakur and Mahendra Misir are sung in temples even today. Most Bhojpuri Virah songs of women are written by men representing women as waiting, pining and carrying the burden of fidelity and chastity. In her gaze or in her smiles, in her laughter or in her songs, a whole life quivers under the shadow of time. A time that has witnessed her cope with stubborn poverty, 41 years of widowhood, loneliness and backbreaking labour in cowsheds and fields of sugarcane. Long ago, Dadi and Mool lost the reverberating voice she once had. To overcome the loss, Dadi began to teach Bhojpuri songs to generations far and detached from the region of Bhojpur, whose culture, Dadi insists, continues to give their life a meaning. Today she sings in a hundred voices. The way things are disappearing, our oral tradition is disappearing, it's fantastic. Tomorrow if you want to know what is a Muslim web, Mahendi song. How do Mahendi songs happen, how do they sing, no one sings now. But then you have Adha Akal there, you can listen to old women singing. Festival songs, racial songs, Jati songs, Jhumar songs, Dhoobi songs, they are over here. If we live only the married songs, most of them have disappeared, all of us disappearing. To sing in pain is sublime and no one knows this better than Bhojpuri women. As eternal migrants, they sing the song of separation to reproduce the memory of pain and longing for future generations of women. When we look back to our past, what are we searching? Do we look for our spiritual and cultural roots? Or do we seek a reference point to judge the distance we have traversed? Perhaps the further away we travel from our roots, the greater our desire to know our past and traditions. For a country where most share a common Bhojpuri tradition, its historical and cultural past is inseparably linked with its folk music. If this folk music disappears, it will take with it the historical memory and the sense of belonging.