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Festivals of Rajasthan
The landscape certainly does not inspire. As
it stretches for miles and countless miles
all around it is apparent that the one thing
the desert does not have is colour. The
sands drift a bleached blond, and the scrub
cover is straggly, and when there are
flowers, they are a dull shade of white or
yellow, with the exception of the flame of
the forest that blooms hidden in the forests
of the Aravallis.
Yet, the Thar, and with it all of Rajasthan,
is known as the most colourful desert in the
world. Festivals and celebrations, music and
dance punctuate its barrenness, turning the
land into a fertile basin of colour and
creativity.
What is it that has inspired these people
to live their life with such verve and
passion? Was it an attempt to overcome the
harshness of the desert conditions that let
them to celebrate in such overwhelming
style? Did the fact that life itself was
unpredictable lend an edge of gaiety to the
manner in which they lived? Or was it all of
these?
In Rajasthan these are mere questions, for
only colour is a reality, as it the zest
with which the people make their journey
through life. It festivals are a source for
lavish enjoyment, so are marriages.
Pageantry is a part of the daily ritual,
manifest in the way the ment and women
dress, resplendent in their raiments where
the colours never seem to cease. Silver and
gold glint at elbow and ankle, jewels
twinkle at nose and neck; veils and turbans
use bold, passionate colours to liven up the
landscape; these is a sense of both
flamboyance and coquetry. Men, no less
ritually adorned than women, can vie with
their women on the amount of jewellery they
sport.
Each region in Rajasthan has its own form of
folk entertainment, the tribals contributing
no little measure to it. In most parts,
entertainment is provided by professional
communities of whose livelihood depends on
it, and who have evolved their respective
arts into fine forms. Certainly the
patronage of the royel families helped to
support the entertainers, but there was also
the Rajasthani ideals of the person who was
equally appreciative of the arts as of
swordsmanship. According to a popular
couplet, only a man sensitive to music,
landscape, appearance, wine, poetry and
painting was worthy being called a true
aristocrat. (Rag, baag, pashak, madh, kavita
aus tasvir, Jo yaanki parakh kare beene kahe
amir.)
Celebrations in Rajasthan range from the
religious to the popular, linked with
commerce, as in the case of the camel and
cattle fairs. In more recent years, the
tourism department too has initiated a
number of tourist fairs in an attempt to
showcase the performing arts of a region.
Amazingly, though the soil throbs with the
sounds of celebration, its vibrant chords
require little sophistry apart from the
simple, unsophisticated instruments that
include the ravanhatha ( a stringed
instrument), the morchang (a Jewish harp),
the bankia (trumpet), algoza (twin flutes),
the duff (tambourine), and the amazingly
innocuous matka (earthen pitcher) which is
flipped over to play the most amazingly
mesmeric beat that resounds with the pulse
of Rajashtan. |
