Baisakhi Mela, a two-day fair, provided residents of New Town a chance to step out and enjoy the Poila Baisakh weekend at Happy Street and the Clock Tower ground. And neither the heat nor a power cut on the first evening could dampen the spirits of the organisers from New Town Sarbojanin.
The fair had both live performances and competitions, and stalls to browse. The performances were taking place on two stages, one at the end of Happy Street and another on the Clock Tower ground.
Before the fair was inaugurated, a prabhat pheri was taken out from Clock Tower that encompassed Central Mall and returned to the starting spot in over an hour. A vehicle carried five singers who played the harmonium. While several songs were sung in chorus, some of those who walked also took the handheld microphone from the vehicle and presented solo songs. Those fronting the rally carried kulos with the letters of the mela name and the figures of the year 1430 painted on them in Bengali. A boy dressed as a baul in saffron punjabi, wearing a rudraksha garland and tilak on the forehead, caught the eye.
The fair itself took off in the evening with an inaugural song. “The dresscode was Dhakai sari. So it gave me the perfect excuse to buy myself one,” laughed Dolon Ganguly, a resident of DC Block, who took part in both the prabhat pheri and the inaugural chorus.
Veteran mime artiste Niranjan Goswami and filmmaker Gautam Haldar, both residents of Salt Lake, were felicitated by committee president Urmila Sen. Kantha artist Pritikona Goswami was felicitated the day after.
While there were baul and kabigaan performances, the headline acts on the two evenings were Riddhi Bandyopadhyay and the folk band Dohar respectively.
Riddhi, according to sources, lost her way to the venue and got delayed. So it was up to the compere Sujata Chakraborty to open the stage to local talent and keep the show going. And by the time the singer reached, there was a power cut. “The stage was plunged in darkness but there was light in the adjacent Clock Tower ground, so we asked her to check out the fair,” said Chakraborty.
Frantic attempts were being made by the organizers in the meantime which yielded a generator that reached in about half an hour and Riddhi’s performance could begin. She invited a senior student of Tanushree Shankar, Adrija Debnath, who was present in the audience, to dance with two of her songs, Sokhi bhabona kahare and Mor ghumo ghore.
(Right) The entries in the sora painting contest. (Left) Contestants display the umbrellas they had painted.
Participants in the prabhat pheri in Action Area 1
Another out-of the-ordinary show was put up by veteran puppeteer Subho Joardar who came all the way from Baruipur with his rod puppets. The National School of Drama passout with four decades in puppetry put up two short comic acts with his 3ft puppets as dramatis personae.
The competitions were centred around umbrella painting, sora painting, alpona, couple ramp walk and cooking.
The umbrella painting contest took place in the community zone under the flyover. “Thirty applicants had registered but four did not turn up. So when some children wanted to join on the spot, we let them and they had so much fun,” said Arati Santra, who coordinated the contest and also drew an alpona at the base of the Clock Tower.
Adrija Debnath aced the contest by drawing patachitra-style animals. “This was the first time I was painting on an umbrella. Since the surface was uneven, the colour was running off and I had to figure out how to tackle that,” the microbiology student said.
The next day’s sora painting drew participants aged five to 67 years. The youngest was little Tapaswini Kar, a bundle of energy who drew a flower. The girl, her father Tapas Kumar Kar said, has her own YouTube dance channel. The contest was won by Sourav Roy.
The cooking contest required participants to bring an echor dish cooked from home. Kakoli Saha of Mallika Malancha received the trophy for her Echor Chingri Monohora (recipe in box).
Participants in the alpona contest were required to complete an alpona on a square piece of chart paper. Ayushmita Deb was the winner here.
A fun event that took place on Sunday night was Sriman Srimati, that got couples to walk the ramp and face questions testing their knowledge about each other’s likings and about the clothes they were wearing.
Tapaswini’s parents Tapas and Sumitra Kar described themselves as a “tech-doc couple”. “My husband is a surgeon while I am a data analyst,” Sumitra said. She got her husband’s preference for shukto over neem-begun correct but left the judges from Tantuja laughing at the mention of carrot and cauliflower being among the ingredients of the dish. “But she tries to make me eat more vegetables with her special recipe,” her husband interjected. The spirited defence won the couple the third place.
The second place went to Adrija’s parents Urmi and Tirthankar Debnath, who were made to take part on the spot by the compere Sujata Chakraborty.
Urmi was one of the most active members of the organising committee, who had designed all the communications of the event, from the logo to the certificates. “I also designed and jointly did the research for the short biographies of the 25 icons we had chosen to pay tribute to — from Kadambini Ganguly to Lalan Fakir to Satyajit Ray,” said the resident of Akankha, in DB Block. Their pictures, along with the write-ups, were hung around the grilled boundary of the Clock Tower, along with the painted umbrellas, for all to see.
The winning couple of Sriman Srimati was Arnab and Arpita Das. “The dhoti I am wearing is stitched. It is called pyjama dhoti,” confessed the man with a shaven pate to The Telegraph Salt Lake, adding that otherwise in a traditional dhoti he would not have been able to participate in the event in between managing his food stall, Teko's Bites, at the fair.
There were more people at the food stalls once the sun set. “It is so humid that we are selling more water than food,” laughed Sandip Datta of La Hanglas.
“There was no other fair in New Town in the month of Baisakh, so we thought of starting one, just as we had started a Durga puja last year common to all blocks. Despite the heat, the footfall was significant. So we plan to make this Baisakhi Mela an annual affair,” said Sen, the president of the organising committee.
Recipe: Echor-Chingri Monohora
Kakoli Saha with her winning recipe
Ingredients:
- Outer layer: Boiled echor
- (raw jackfruit) 250g
- Boiled potato 1medium size
- Deep fried & chopped onions
- 1 cup Ginger garlic paste 1tbsp
- Raw mango pulp 1tbsp
- Green chilli paste 1tsp
- Jeera powder 1tsp
- Dhania powder 1tsp
- Garam masala powder 1tsp
- Salt to taste
- Corn flour 1tsp
- Rice flour 1tsp for binding
- Oil 2cups
Filling: Grated coconut 1cup, small prawns 100g peeled & cleaned, ginger paste 1tsp, raw mango pulp 1tbsp, green chilli paste ½ tsp, jeera powder ½tsp, dhania powder ½tsp, garam masala powder ½tsp, sugar ½tsp, salt to taste, oil 2tbsp
Raw mango syrup: Boiled raw mango 100g, Kashmiri chilli powder ½tsp, black salt ½tsp, sugar 2tbsp, water 2cups.
For outer layer: Mash the boiled echor and potato. Heat oil in wok and put ginger garlic paste, all pastes and masala powders and stir, then put in echor and potato and a little water, keep stirring and add corn and rice flour till it hardens slightly. Then keep aside for cooling.
Filling: Heat oil and fry the grated coconut, prawns, masala powders and other ingredients together till it becomes little dry.
Mango syrup: Boil raw mango, chilli powder, salt and sugar together and mash it, strain the mixture and make a smooth syrup. Once the echor potato is cooled, make handfull-size balls and fill them with the prawn-coconut mixture. Shape them into balls but with a flat base. Then deep fry till brownish. Keep them on a plate and pour some raw mango syrup over them. It's ready to eat.