Face Painting

Today I share a story of belief, of trust and of relationship.

 

Gajan festival or Gajan is a folk festival which can be observed during the end of the Bengali calendar, this festival is celebrated mainly in the rural parts of Bengal (West Bengal) and Bangladesh. A Gajan is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly in the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh on the occasion of Charak Puja. The groups of men and women, who take up this time bound ritual, have to go through a month long fasting from sunrise to sunset, live strictly on fruits & perform the daily worship in order to get the blessings of the lord. But the most accepted story of Gajan relates to the conversion of the Buddhist monks to Hinduism. It gradually transformed into a festival of Lord Shiva – the God of Gods (as they said, “Deb’er deb – MohaDeb”).

 

In rural Bengal, there are few places known for its Gajan celebrations. We some photographers or photowalkers planned to cover the whole festival- to its making to end. So before the main festival we set out and reached to our meeting place. And as we never knew of the place or none of us was ever went there. So we started asking people, local boys/groups and we walked a lot but we did not find the exact place where this festival takes place.

 

And finally a group of boys who were playing cricket beside the small river and pointed us the direction. According to their direction we had to cross the bridge which was made of bamboos and it was not stable. So we crossed it and also according to their direction we would get the Kali Temple courtyard. After going there again we found nothing but after roaming a lot we found a group of boys who do this festival and they were preparing for the street plays. The preparation includes painting their faces to imitate different Gods and Goddess to enact short street skits. The skits depict mythological stories molded to suit the folk lore. So one of them showed the way to their green room or so called a broken room where they were being prepared, including painting their faces with the colors. Little children to adults to make up artists all co-operated with us. They were very helpful. As its village area so they were very happy to see the cameras and some of them thought we are from TV channel and they started questioning and all but it was fun to talk to them. I continued interacting with them and they became friendly and started giving poses but our motto was to take some candid photographs so we planned and finally we got some very good snaps.

 

After a break and refreshing us we started capturing the street play which was performed by them and we continued with the skits. The skits include folk lore patches of stories of Shiva and Parvati, Goddess Durga and of Lord Krishna. Incidentally, Gajan folk lore has Lord Shiva getting married to Hara Kali this time. So we had the Shiva dancing with different other Gods and Goddesses of which there were Lord Krishna and Fairies. It ended with Maa Kali standing up on Lord Shiva. It was enough for the day and we came back to home.

 

The next day again we met at our meeting point and was the day of Charak Puja and we went there directly. We saw a small fair was there. Stalls, shops are being prepared; hawker gathered the place and lots of people. There was near about thousand or more people. I told everyone to snapping whatever we get. You can easily Google and know what Charak is. At first I was a bit nervous as I never did this kind of things but later on the weird feeling is gone. Pasting 6 photographs of Charak festival. We started clicking the rituals. All were busy in taking snaps but I saw some people were carrying the sandle wood from that small river and they were saying “bom bole”-the name of Lord Shiva. I informed everyone to take the snaps and after that thiat wood was placed in a place and all the ladies including children and the boys came and started oiling the wood and some other rituals with the water and milk. We took all the snaps and there was a boy actually he is devotee who pierce his neck with iron rods and does a victory lap across the field. One of other devotee pierce their back with hooks. They are hung by the hooks to the Charak Tree (Where the Lord Shiva is instilled) and swung. And it was getting darker and after clicking a lot of photographs we took again a break.my 32GB memory card was full.

 

After 15 minutes we came back and started clicking again. We got some good snaps in low light and it was 8 PM by clock and our journey ended here. Let me tell you, we left our home at 1PM and we reached there by 2 O’clock. It was a great journey for all of us and we are really proud of having some good friends and to cover the whole festival. And most importantly that day we faced a lot of problem because many of them asked us who we are, what we are doing and we had to answer according to their taste. But we got appreciation also from the audience. Our journey finally ends here.

 

P.S."Copyright © – Newton Saha.

The reproduction, publication, modification, transmission or exploitation of any work contained herein for any use, personal or commercial, without my prior written permission is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved."

 

Thanks and Regards,

Newton Saha, India

Call/whatsapp: +91-8348670111

Email: newton.sahalove@gmail.com

nsfilmandphotography@gmail.com

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