Konark Calling

The yoginis of Hirapur

In Bhubaneswar, if you see your fellow passenger in the bus touching his forehead with his right hand, that means you are crossing a temple. People do it quite often, especially while travelling. Big or small, there is a temple in every corner of this city. One of them is the 64-yogini temple of Hirapur, about 19 km from the city. Built in the 9th century AD, the structure of the temple is hypaethral, having a circular stonewall which is about nine feet high.

Sixty yoginis — in different forms, shapes and postures — are kept inside the circular wall. Carved from black chlorite, many yoginis here have animal faces. However, the saddest part is that most of them are in ruins, the legs missing or the faces gone. Among the four yoginis kept separately in the central pillar, the 61st one is missing. Nobody knows what happened to her. Even Surendranath, the ASI’s monument attendant of the temple, doesn’t know.

But if you ask him about the names of the yoginis, he will begin to reel them off. “Chandika, Thara, Jamuna, Narmada...” He knows the names of the 64 yoginis by heart. The temple, it is believed, was a center of Tantric practices that prevailed between the 9th and the 13th centuries. The main deity is Mahamaya, who is wrapped in a red cloth and decorated with flowers.

People worship different yoginis for different reasons. “The villagers here believe that in the dead of night, all the yoginis come out of the temple and walk around the village,” says Surendranath. When you bid farewell to Surendranath, he requests you to sign the visitor’s book. Most of the addresses in the book are abroad. The yoginis are travelling outside Hirapur.

Bull fight

If you drive from Puri to Konark, you have to be careful — not because of potholes, but because of the black bulls and white cows on the roads. The bulls are furious; they fight with each other and people watch gleefully. You too are forced to join the show. If the fight goes on, people curiously form a circle around the bulls. If you happen to be in the front row, then you have to worry about your vehicle being hit. The cows are not dangerous, but they seem to be sleeping only on the roads. You blow the horn but they don’t care. The poor driver has to stop the vehicle, get out, and pull them to the side of the road.

Festival of culture

Odissi is the soul of Orissa. People can talk about it for hours. “Orissa hasn’t produced a perfect Odissi dancer after Sanjukta Panigrahi,” one says. Don’t be surprised. There are many good dancers Orissa has produced after Sanjukta, but here you have to overlook that, for when they talk about Odissi, they become highly emotional.

Their love for dance must be the reason behind the success of the recently concluded 16th Konark Festival, a five-day dance event held every December against the backdrop of the famous Sun Temple. It was six in the evening. The sun sets early here. Lampshades in various colours and sizes moved slowly as the breeze from the Bay of Bengal hit them.

“I have been attending the festival for 12 years. I never missed one. I watch the programme in the evening and go to the beach in the morning. It’s a break from my routine work,” said Channa Basavanna, a bank officer from Bellary. There are many like Channa for whom the first week of December is the season of dance.

This year’s festival had dancers like Raja and Radha Reddy, Ratikant Mohapatra, Rohini Bhate, Meera Das, Preeti Patel, Sharmila Biswas, Deepti Omchery and Bhanumati. If you don’t count Raja and Radha Reddy, Biswas’ performance stood out. The improvisation in technique, using colourful objects, kept the audience engaged. A four-year-old girl, who was sitting near me, was so impressed that she watched the programme till the end. But Basavanna didn’t like it. “It’s not Odissi, it’s something else. I came to see pure Odissi. Sharmila has broken the traditional format,” he said.

Basavanna might not agree but the truth is people liked it. Similar to this event was a performance by Ratikant Mohapatra, son of Kelucharan Mohapatra, on the last day of the festival. “Watch this performance carefully, there is a huge debate going on about this particular work,” someone in the press box told me. The item was choreographed by Ratikant on Aruna Sairam’s song Allah Allah, written by Tamil poet Subramania Bharati. While Aruna’s rendition had the secular touch, the result was a blend of music and dance. But still some people disliked it. Sharmila and Ratikant demonstrated the evolution of Odissi. And evolution doesn’t mean breaking off tradition.

Mischievous priests

Please remove your belt, shoes and valet if they are made of leather,” says my friend Arabinda Jena, the tourist officer of Orissa Tourism Development Corporation. At the entrance of the famous Jagannath Temple, I see a mountain of belts and shoes. Photography is strictly prohibited. To go inside, you just be in queue, and you will be pushed by humanity into the sanctum.

Constructed in the 12th century AD, the temple has wooden images of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra. The priests sit in front of the deities, as many as four or five of them. If you have money in hand, they immediately grab you from the crowd and let you have a “good” darshan. And if you don’t have money, they treat you like a beggar; in their language, you have to get out of the sanctum immediately.

It is much like guides approaching you when you visit a tourist spot; if you fix an amount, the priest will take care of you, and he will be your guard.

The Nolias of Puri

The Puri beach is pleasant, neat and clean. But the stories of the nolias (lifeguards) of the beach are a bit disappointing. Purnarao has been saving people from the sea for 18 years, and he has already saved the lives about 40 people. “If we see someone drowning, we immediately get into the spot. If he is inside the ‘safe’ area, we take the tube and go. If the victim has crossed that spot, then we have to go without the tube. And it’s risky,” says Purnarao.

Coming from nearby villages, these lifeguards are having a bad time of it. While talking to Purnarao, others join. Everybody is allotted a number, which is written on his conical cap. “We have saved many people from drowning. Some people give us a good reward. And there are people who shout at us in case we ask for money,” says Dasurao, another nolia.

To substantiate their point, they show me their album and record books. Many survivors have written their gratitude for these people for giving them a new life. Someone even went to the extent of writing it with his own blood. What do the nolias do after saving a person from the sea? “We immediately take him to the nearby hospital and get him the best treatment,” says Dasurao. Though the nolias are doing a good job, they are not getting anything from the government. But not everybody agrees with this sentiment. An old man I meet at Puri says that these nolias claim huge amounts whey they save somebody’s life. When life itself is precious, what does ‘‘huge amount’’ mean?

A word: If you like sea food, then you must try the special prawn masala and pomfret fry at the OTDC’s Panthanivas here. The “Today’s Special” board inside the dining hall of the hotel springs a surprise every day.

Pattachitra and Gotipua

About 13 km from Puri, there is a small village called Raghurajpur, famous for its pattachitra painting and palm leaf inscription, cow dung toys, wood work and bell metal work. As you enter the village, you see everyone doing something. Some are painting, some are mixing paints, and the old artisans sit together and play cards.

There are 103 households with 311 artisans in this village. “The pattachitra paintings are specially prepared on cotton cloth, which is coated with a mixture of gum and chalk and polished, before applying natural colours. We make colours using stones and other ingredients,” says Sharathchandran, a senior artist in the village. “The subject of the painting is based on stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. If you don’t know the story, then you wont understand the painting also,” he says.

The village also has a living tradition of Gotipua, the ancient dance form from which Odissi developed. Odissi exponent Kelucharan Mohapatra was born here and trained in Gotipua. While walking, you may not notice an already decayed brick building on your right side. “This is Kelucharan Mohapatra’s house,” says Sharathchandran. The house of Orissa’s illustrious son looked abandoned.

We later walk into Gotipua Gurukul. The guru Charan Das is eating lunch. A couple of boys aged between 5 and 12 surround us. One takes the maddalam and another one with the harmonium. Five or six boys come in a row and start dancing. They have long hair, and they dance for a while to the tune of the percussionists. Why do they grow hair? “Oh, so they don’t need to wear a wig while dressing as women,” says someone who accompanied us.

Colours of Pipli

You must be blind if you don’t stop at Pipli. Shops with colourful lampshades, appliqué works, canopies... Everything has the Orissa touch here. For every item, there is also an imitation. Some shops don’t entertain bargaining, but you can try your luck. Beware; if you quote a price and walk away, don’t expect the salesman to call you back. The shopowners are very laidback. Most of the shops have annexes where the artists sit and work. The owner views their activities over closed-circuit TV. He also gives directions to his employees over the phone and at times switches over to ESPN to watch the cricket match. Pipli is the junction if you are coming from Bhubaneswar; go straight, and you reach Puri; turn left, and you enter Konark.

Treasure house

A brochure of Bhubaneswar’s Museum of Tribal Arts and Artifacts says there are 62 tribe communities in Orissa as per the 2001 census. Their population constitutes 22.13 percent of the total population of the state. Santal, Juang, Gadaba, Saora and Kondh, dominate the population chart.

In Bhubaneswar, you can see tribal art decorating the walls of dining halls of hotels and drawing rooms of houses. But what you see is the imitation of the original done by some local artist. The reason is that there is a good market for tribal products in and outside Orissa. So the local people do make good money, selling tribal art.

If you really want to know about tribals, you must go to their habitat. But before that, check out this museum. About 1900 tribal artifacts have already been displayed in five huge halls. There are dress and ornaments, dhokra items, dance and musical instruments, weapons, fishing nets, animal traps, arts and photographs. There is a separate section for combs, most of them made in bamboos, for different occasions; combs, they say, possess great sentimental value in tribal lives.