Siddi Dhamal in action in Salt Lake. (Aranya Sen)

When Siddi Dhamal performed in front of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam a few years ago, the former President’s guards stopped the dance midway. “They thought we would hurl bombs into the air when we took out coconuts for our act,” laughs Farooq Umar.

Farooq, an Ahmedabad resident, is a descendant of the Africans who arrived in India nearly 750 years ago. The community calls itself Siddi and Siddi Dhamal is the troupe that performs African tribal dance. The highlight of the act is dancers tossing coconuts into the air and breaking them with their heads. Recalling the performance before Kalam, Farooq said: “The dance was allowed to continue after we explained the sequence to the guards. The President loved it.”

Calcuttans loved it, too. The group had come down from Ahmedabad to perform at Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre in Salt Lake’s CD Block for Kali puja. The audience sat spellbound as the 15 dancers pranced about. Children even ran to catch bits of the broken coconuts once they fell on the ground. “I want to keep this husk as a souvenir,” said 10-year-old Avishek Mitra.

The troupe has retained the African flavour of the dance but borrowed from the Indian culture, too. “We speak Swahili among ourselves but want to connect with Hindi-speaking audiences,” says the guru of the group, Rumanaben Siddi, who has followed the practice of Gujarati women of adding “ben” to her name.

The Siddis have no written history of themselves. “Even the songs we dance to are in danger of getting lost as they are hardly recorded,” adds Rumanaben, who has recently noted down 250 Swahili songs she had learnt from her parents. The songs are all hymns written by Siddi saint Hazrat Baba Gaur.

Siddi Dhamal performs around 30 shows a year and has come to Calcutta on several occasions. “The food here is gema kudiya,” said Rumanaben. That’s Swahili for great food.