Thursday, 26 December 2024
Thursday, 26 December 2024
PATTERNS: The winning entry by Alok Avinash shows Santhali women celebrating the harvest festival of Karam in a village in the Ayodhya Hills of Bengal’s Purulia district. The women propitiating and dancing before the green offerings are all unmarried. They are expressing their gratitude for nature’s bounty and also praying for a bountiful family life for themselves. “I wanted to capture the culture of Purulia,” says Alok, whose family has been settled in the area for five generations now.
Courtesy, Tribal Design ForumThe Tribal Design Forum was born in the middle of the pandemic. Its primary and foregrounded idea is to have a platform for designers and creative professionals from the various tribes of India. Its underlying ambition is to puncture the unyielding and homogenous understanding of tribes and what is tribal, and this despite the fact that the Constitution alone recognises 705 tribes.
The photography contest organised recently by the forum was aligned to the second objective. “We thought it would help us crowdsource pictures, stories, and unseen facets of tribal life from different parts of India,” says Sudhir John Horo, convenor of the Tribal Design Forum. Here are the winning entries and the stories attached to them.
OLD LEAVES: One-day last monsoon, a group of tribal women in Purulia were returning from the fields when the rains came down. But they had on the ghong, their cape made of kenda leaves. Says Somenath Mukhopadhyay, who took the photograph, “It takes a long time to make these but they last a couple of years. They are heavy and present generations don’t have the strength to handle the weight of this traditional cape. They prefer to use plastic instead.”
Courtesy, Tribal Design Forum
COW HEARD: The Santhals of Purulia celebrate Sohrai, a harvest festival. They decorate their homes using natural dyes. They also worship their cattle. Sudipto Das, who took this photograph, says, “Now cement structures are replacing the mud huts. There is no room for olden customs.” Can the cow with the liquid eye smell the change in the air?
Courtesy, Tribal Design Forum
CHEERS: The Bonda tribe lives in the hills of Koraput in Odisha. Last June, Barun Rajgaria took this shot of tribal women enjoying a drink at the Onkadelli market. They are drinking out of a vessel made out of dried bottle gourd. He says, “Times are changing. Out of 50 Bonda people I saw, barely five or six wore their traditional gear.” Rajgaria adds, “When we say tribal we only think grinding poverty, difficult living conditions. But beyond that there is a spirit, a joy of living. I recognised that joy when I saw those two women.”
Courtesy, Tribal Design Forum
FADEOUT: Arunachal’s Ziro Valley is home to the peace-loving Apatanis. The story goes that Apatani women were so famed for their beauty that once upon a time there were frequent invasions by outsiders and the women were snatched away. And that is why Apatani women of a certain generation embraced tattoos and piercings, which apparently defaced their natural beauty. Thereafter, the tattoos and piercings became a legacy. Says Debdatta Chakraborty, who took this photograph, “Only elderly women sport these now.”
Courtesy, Tribal Design Forum
