Bio-wise and otherwise

Fun and Folklore

On March 15, our IPG group at IEC took off in a bus to visit a place called 'Janapada Loka' situated on the Bangalore-Mysore Highway. The word 'Janapada' means folklore and this can relate to dance, dress, habits and lifestyle of the native people.

Janapada Loka is a 15 acre complex which is a treasure trove of Karnataka's folk heritage.  For just a few hours, our group was transported into an entirely different world of tribal people and villagers who are often forgotten in the mad race of modernity. The serene stillness of the place was akin to the quiet lifestyle of these people.

The place itself was established by HL Nagegowda, a man who took to popularizing rural traditions and customs and reviving some of this quaint and rustic charm. Apparently, he had visited hundreds of rural households and learnt of their customs so that he could exhibit these through custom built museums.

      Swords displayed in the museum 

 We were first taken around the Lokamahal museum of folk culture by an enthusiastic guide. The museum had exhibits of folkcrafts such as baskets, 'basingas' (head-dress worn by a bride and bridegroom), costumes of tribes and village dancers, and even cooking vessels used by the rural folk.

                                                                      Statues of Yakshagana dancers

At some point in the conversation, our guide had mentioned that he came from a family of singers, so we managed to persuade him to sing an old ballad which depicted a wife's sorrow for her husband leaving her for another woman. If we could understand the lyrics well enough, we'd have probably gone misty eyed.

 
But there was simply no time for mist of any sort whatsoever!

The pinnacle of our idyllic morning was the live drum dance by tribesmen of Karnataka. We sat alongside what seemed like a godzillion schoolkids whose eyes gleamed collectively like lighthouses of a vast beach. The beat of the drums was tantalizing as we watched in amazement the synergistic movement of the drummers. Starting with a slow drumroll, the drummers would end each pattern with a crescendo, beating the leather membrane in a frenzy.

                 The tantalizing drumroll 

Towards the end of the show, the drummers hoisted a few lucky kids onto the drums, and paraded them sitting thus, around the ground. The adrenaline levels must have been pretty high among the kids, coz' the flushed faces would have made Rudolph  shop for rouge.

Lunch was  at Kamat hotel, served in a traditional manner. This meant that we had to sit cross-legged on a low stool, even if it made some of us go cross-eyed trying to bend our knees. We ate a sumptuous meal served on banana leaves. But I suspect that some of us ate less than our normal quota for fear of falling off the stool!

After a heavy meal, one would have normally reclined against a good-natured tree and snooze the hours away. But the organizers had us play a game of lies, toss a ball against a stack of stones and run for cover, and finally chase our opponents crying out 'kho'!

We returned to office and back to the future. But even the stuffed up mailboxes with all the the reminders could not take our minds off the fantastic experience. The best reminder of the day happened to be that of roots, revelery and reverberating drumroll.

Acknowledgement: I'd like to thank Manu Samuel (IEC IPG), for the wonderful pictures displayed in this blog.

Posted at 03:03AM Mar 16, 2007 by Manju in Sun  |  Comments[3]