WHY THE SHOW MUST GO ON IN JANGALMAHAL

This is a laudable effort. Reviving jatra will be a Herculean task because people from these villages have been migrating. In a time when Hindi music and smartphone videos rule, a revival of jatra here would be a source of regional identity and pride.

SATYABATI GIRI, retired professor of medieval Bengali and folk literature at Jadavpur University

Chiriya Chiriani once kept villages in West Midnapore awake all night. This folk theatre format involves three characters — a young man, a young woman and an old man in the role of Aja (grandfatherly person). Aja is sort of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. As the young couple set out on a journey to meet, he tries to confuse them or seduce the young woman. In the end the two manage to get around him and come together.

The play is performed all night, with no stage or props. Just a group of villagers clustered around in a circle, reliving a tale whose essence has remained unchanged for hundreds of years but whose storyline is so flexible, it can be updated and adapted by each performing trio.

Chiriya Chiriani used to be staged on auspicious occasions — a festival puja, a wedding or even a big gathering of families in the village. The actors were usually local farmers who had learnt their role from their elders.

“Since the roles are passed down in an oral tradition, once the performances stop, there is no trace of them,” says Madhup De.

De, a retired deputy inspector of schools from West Midnapore, is leading an initiative to revive dying forms of folk theatre and dance like Chiriya Chiriani (Male Bird, Female Bird), and preserve a niche culture that is fading amid the violence and instability of a once-Maoist stronghold.

His focus is Jangalmahal, a heavily forested region on the western fringes of West Bengal that comprises 11 blocks across the districts of Jhargram, West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia.

De worked in Midnapore town from the 1980s to his retirement in 2011, and has written four books on disappearing aspects of the local culture.

Among the other folk forms he is trying to preserve are the Paik dance and Sitachuri, Bhanr Jatra, Champabati and Lalita Pala theatre forms.

These are just words to most Indians, but each holds the key to an ancient and rich tradition of storytelling not found elsewhere in the country.

Bhanr Jatra, for instance, is a type of folk jatra made up entirely of obscene humour and attended only by men. Paik is a dance form once performed by the soldiers (paiks in Bengali) of the local king as a way to remain fit for war. The martial dance involves leaps and displays of skill with sticks.