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October 24th 2008
Published: October 24th 2008
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24 October 2008

I just got back from an epic trip. I feel like every entry after a field trip always warrants gushing about how amazing the place I just was …was. It’s never “Man it feels good to be back in the city”. We spent four days in Bishnipur and Purulia, seeing some folk culture, ancient temples and this crazy masked dance known as Chhou. The weather was glorious, the quietness of the countryside was amazing, and the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. To recap:

Monday evening we boarded a train in Kolkata to Bishnipur. We got there late, had a meal and passed out in our hotel rooms. IT was odd getting off of the air-conditioned train and being hit with air that wasn’t 90 degrees. It was still probably in the high seventies, maybe even low eighties outside, but it felt like it was in the sixties to our Kolkata-Conditioned bodies. Amazing. Also, I think it is some kind of hatching season around West Bengal because the air was thick with mosquitoes, moths, crickets and grasshoppers. It felt like walking into some strange time warp back into the plagues in the Old Testament. I’m sure those were a lot worse though… The next day we ventured out to “temple-hop” with this toothless and bossy guide who had a severe under bite, making his decent English, or Banglish, completely incomprehensible. Despite that, we saw some amazing “dead” temples, that is, the deities had been taken out and they were maintained by the archaeological society for shoe-wearing tourists like ourselves. The place was just infested with these beautiful temples—they were everywhere along with artisans selling terracotta handicrafts on the side of the road. The weather was hot in the sun, but the humidity felt nonexistent.

After lunch we boarded into cars, strapped our backpacks to the roof, and made a three-hour journey to Purulia. The drive was this endless trek through rural India, bypassing cows, bicycles, goats, and those sauntering to work or for an afternoon stroll. The air was clean and cool and almost without honking. The following day, after an evening of the usual: checking into our hotel, finding a mishti shop and having some cha, and dinner, we set out early to see a mask-making village. The masks made in this village are the principal masks used in Chhou dance culture… but I guess I need to explain that first…

First of all, we were escorted to this village where the dance would be performed around dusk—a beautiful and remote drive through winding and possibly unsafe dirt roads among rice paddies and other agricultural fields. The sky was so clear, and the horizon so unobstructed, you could see the orangy-purple point where the heavens met the countryside. We got to the village and out of the car and were immediately surrounded by hoards of children. I don't know where they came from—it’s like no one was outside and then we stepped out of the car and there materialized kids upon kids upon kids. Arnab and the two other professors from Purulia who specialize in Chhou culture brought the eleven of us these woven bed/couch things that are pretty common in rural West Bengal on which we could sit while we waited for the dance troupe to get ready. Someone explained:

“Here you will sit and wait. It is dark so stay here. The dance is soon—ok. good. Oh yes! Be careful over here,” as the announcer points to our left at a mound of sand very close to one of the couch/beds. “this is the village’s most sacred spot. So…don’t step on it, ok?”

Yeah, ok, we will try not to step on this sacred sandy mound that is becoming less and less visible with the growing darkness. Where are we? Why are we circled by a group of people probably as large as half the population of K College? Then this tiny and ancient man was passed around, nearly, the half circle of us on the couches and introduced as the “Team captain” of this village’s Chhou dance troupe. Then they gave us some cha… then it was too dark to do anything or know what was going on (our lecture and briefing on Chhou was delivered after this experience….) and we looked up and we could see the stars. Nothing else mattered while we waited.

So, Chhou: the area we visited is known for its exquisite and 100% ethnic folk dance, music, craft, and culture. The three of these things—the dance, music and then craft—make up this form of purely Indian theatre tradition known as Chhou. This dance is done in the villages exclusively by men who are highly trained in their art, but who also function as fathers, farmers, and laborers in their villages. Chhou comprises of two main things that fuel the other pieces of it, making it this very special, delicate, and still powerful system: Power and Labor. The dance itself is very acrobatic, amazingly acrobatic, actually. The men train from their youth to be able to do the dance—and when it is performed by the village’s troupe, they are adorned with elaborate costumes and ornamentation and these grandiose masks (made by artists from this village we visited). The masks can be huge—sometimes with a span of four or five feet, I bet. The mask itself is kind of papier-mâché, molded and painted to represent the character (Durga, Ganesh, Laksme, Saraswati, etc…) in the myth or story that is being danced. After the actual mask is made, then huge amounts of decoration are added to it. The dancer wears these big, hot, and seemingly suffocating masks with all of their elaborate costuming and then performs this warlike, erratic, and acrobatic dance to very rhythmic and shrill music that is narrated. These Chhou dancers hop around and dance and pull off standing-back tucks, among other things, without falling and breaking a neck, nose or limb, or squashing their beautiful masks. The dance is done to Chhou drummers and other musicians who play this incessant and highly rhythmic music; there is a base line played by two large sitting drums, and then the intricate and complex rhythms are played by standing drummers who move around, yell, and sweat almost as much as the costumed athletic dancers. Then there are trumpets and other horn instruments, and a synthesizer (a tainting of westernization and modernization… we can argue about the positive or negative affects of this later…). I wish I had excellent footage of this dance to post—because it is a pretty unbelievable event that I am doing absolutely no justice in explaining.

But, after the mask making village and before this night performance we did get the sweet chance to spend an hour and a half of so in this FOREST. According to Arnab, who likes to joke around and pull shit on us, there were elephants in the forest, but we for sure didn’t see any. It was pretty beautiful, the rice paddies butting right up to this mountainous forest. The biggest animal nature we saw were enormous spiders and a pond full of frogs.

Now it’s Friday morning and we’re back in Kolkata after a very early train arrival at 4 am. We have the day off to take naps, work on papers, and, well, blog, I suppose. Tomorrow we again resume a schedule. In two weeks seven of our now very close friends will leave Barret, Hannah, Erin and me and Kolkata, as they make the journey home or through the rest of India. To speak in K language, we are finishing up week 12. A few weeks ago the remaining weeks seemed to never get smaller, but now, looking on paper of the six remaining weeks of IPSL and then one week of travel… some doesn’t seem too far off. Winter is getting closwer. Halloween is almost here, the election… everything is speeding up. It is weird to think about how desirable my room and snow sound, but how the version of myself that is in Kolkata right now will soon be transplanted, or re-planted in my original spot, and I’m not sure what I am supposed to do with that event. Is that supposed to be a relief—a break from crazy city life and service and being a foreigner—or a stressful operation? When I get home, I’ve completed the event of college that I’ve been working hard for since my senior year of high school. I don’t have to work for this any more—getting into India and then living thorugh India—I have to start working for “real” life: SIPing, graduation, jobs, …. more school? Working for the point in life when the CIP doesn’t turn in all of my forms and checks in for me. How can I crave and miss control here—that is, control over Uncle Roy—when returning home means that I might have much more control than I want.


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