13 hours Ago
Those shawls that caught your attention at a Page 3 party, that multicoloured ‘throw’ your heart leapt at in the crafts bazaar, the throaty love song YouTube sprang at you when you’d searched “holidays in Kutch”, the tall glass of “calcium-enriched” milk, the pricey discs of dried dung sold online...
What do all these have in common? They are all connected to pastoral communities. Pastoralists inhabit our lives wholesomely; yet, we hardly see them. ‘Living Lightly – an Utsav Celebrating Pastoralism in the Deccan’ sought to remedy this.
Hosted by the Centre for Pastoralism, Sahjeevan, and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) with other collaborators, the event that firmly put the spotlight on pastoral communities, comprised art installations, a film festival, concerts, a play, workshops, consultations, conferences, and a crafts bazaar – even a cafe selling goat cheese and camel milk cookies. From celebrating them and telling their tales (even retelling their myths), the exhibition highlighted the challenges that pastoralists and their animals face in today’s world. Held between 31st January and 16th February across different venues in the city, the exhibition presented stories of a very Deccani Baa Baa Black Sheep, of grasslands in and around Bangalore now replaced by concrete jungles, of cattle standing together and saving herders from prowling tigers, of camels ferrying whole communities across harsh terrain, of bells bringing healing to buffaloes in labour and more.
Quite fantastically, the exhibition made visitors aware of the complex intersections between pastoral communities and culture, climate change, capitalism, craft, institutional dysfunction, farming, deforestation, tiger conservation, grasslands, poetry, myths, literature and other aspects of “civilization”. Among the highlights was the stop-motion animation film Desi Oon by Suresh and Nilima Eriyat’s Studio Eeksaurus. An “ode to Deccani sheep, shepherds and sustainability”, it was crafted using cream, brown and black Deccani wool and tells the conservation success story of Balu Mama and Satyawa (though the film, unfortunately, did not mention Satyawa, the on-site exhibition at IGNCA described her as a fiercely compassionate shepherdess who nurtured the flock she brought in marriage, and in whose memory a shrine stands at Metke, near Kolhapur).
The six-minute film raised important questions about whopping wool imports in the face of wastage and the neglect of abundantly available, ecologically precious Deccani wool. The exhibits at the Desi Oon pavilion in Bangalore International Centre (BIC) creatively displayed how wool panels could be used for insulation against cold and sound. Kurubar Haada , a musical treat on shepherding and wool songs, also presented at BIC, was put together by folk researcher Shilpa Mudbi (also a section curator for the exhibition).
Performed by Kalaburgi Kala Mandali (a band that Shilpa facilitated in the year-and-a-half that she worked towards the exhibition), the songs evocatively described work, life, love and celebration among the Kurubas. Despite challenges posed by terrain, language and the non-availability of translators, Shilpa and Mahesh Allur (a collaborator who became a field worker for Living Lightly and also Kalaburgi Kala Mandali’s percussionist) were able to access the songs of Kurubas and Gollas through Mahesh’s extensive field work in Gulbarga and parts of Bidar, Raichur, Yadgir. After the first round of scouting for songs, they were recorded in the voices of the women who had shared them.
These songs that rested fluidly in community memories changed in every rendition, posing hurdles to learning. Yet, the band, formed through auditions, learnt them, later presenting them in the concert at BIC. Some of the community song-keepers (whose song versions had been recorded) were invited to IGNCA, Bangalore, where they taught songs to urban people.
This Folk Voices Lab became “a precious window for learning and interaction,” says Shilpa, because it opened conversations between city dwellers (disconnected from their roots and voices) and rural practitioners for whom singing about their lives is all in a day’s work. The play Gwale Matwale (directed by Narendra Sachar and Maya Rao) described the syncretic practices of the Dhangar Gavli community from north Karnataka. It showcased conflicts between the community and new land owners infringing on forest assets, while also warmly describing the bonds shared by herders with their animals.
Thinaiyiruppu , a musical offering of Sangam poetry, curated by theatre practitioner, A Mangai (with musician Bindhumalini and accompanying aristes), richly laid out “the inner and outer landscape of ancient Tamil herders waiting – for rains to start or stop, for milk to curdle, for the sound of bells announcing the return of the beloved.” Associate curator Priyashri Mani described another event in which 20 women from Tamil Nadu and 25 from Maharasthra (both sets from herding communities) sat together sharing traditional knowledge systems (they’d brought medicinal plants from their regions) and songs. Pastoralists from Umbalacheri, Tamil Nadu, described how they’d mobilized change through protest when denied forest access to graze their cows.
“Dung, a big source of income for pastoralists, is usually collected and prepared for sale by women,” says Priyashri, pointing to their crucial role in the dung economy valued at 33 billion INR. “This is the first time that women pastoralists have gotten together for a discussion,” she adds, sharing that it has led to an initiative to build a women pastoralists forum. Designed by Oroon Das and team, the exhibition at IGNCA combined diverse materials with multiple story-telling techniques, technologies and striking photographs to reflect the lived experience of herding communities from across the Deccan plateau.
Chief curator, Sushma Iyengar, says Living Lightly is rooted in an intent to foster deeper emotional engagement with communities that do live ever so lightly but on the brink. “Constantly transforming, adapting to huge variabilities, shifting economic and political climates, tough ecological situations, terrains, battling uncertainties and finding ways (literally too), these communities are constantly regenerating, taking very, very little but giving much more back to the earth. They really are the future,” she says.
Charumathi Supraja is a writer, poet and journalist based in Bengaluru..
