The 124th Pous Mela started in Santiniketan on Sunday with a special prayer at Chhatimtala on Visva-Bharati campus.

This Pous Mela, Visva-Bharati is organising three exhibitions to celebrate the centenaries of Kala Bhavana, Sangeet Bhavana and Rabindranath Tagore’s thought of setting up Visva-Bharati. The fair will continue for six days.

Nearly one lakh people attended the Pous Mela on Sunday.

The three exhibitions were inaugurated by vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty at the fair ground. The exhibitions will remain open on all six days of the fair.

At the exhibition of Kala Bhavana, apart from several artwork and paintings, rare photographs of teachers and artists like Ramkinkar Baij, Somnath Hore and KG Subramanyan have been displayed.

In the exhibition of Sangeet Bhavana, the history of setting up the music school by Tagore has been displayed, along with photographs of several programmes organised by Sangeet Bhavana. Rabindra Bhavana displayed photographs portraying Tagore’s thought to set up Visva-Bharati in 1918. The exhibition comprised several old photographs of Tagore and other teachers of Visva-Bharati in his time taking classes.

Sisir Sahana, the convenor of the exhibition committee of Visva-Bharati, said: “The three exhibitions on three centenary celebrations are the main attraction of the Pous Mela this year. We tried our best to decorate the exhibitions to attract the visitors.”

After the prayer, as per tradition, students and teachers and old residents of Santiniketan led by the VC participated in a procession singing Tagore’s song Aguner Parasmani Chhoao Prane that terminated in front of Udayan, one of the houses belonging to Tagore.