Millions of devotees gathered in Puri for the annual Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath amid heightened security as the nine-day annual celebrations began in Odisha's temple town.
The chariots of Lord Jagannath, his elder brother Lord Balabhadra and younger sister Devi Subhadra were pulled by the devotees on the streets called Badadanda as people played drums, trumpets and sang devotional songs.
Devotees pulled the chariots from Ratha Khala or the construction site and then parked them outside the lion's gate for the commencement of the rituals for the yatra.
The first chariot or Nandighosa to reach lion's gate was that of Lord Jagannath, followed by Devi Subhadra's Devadala and at last Lord Balabhadra's Taladhwaja.
Jun 15, 2019
Project to Document Bengali Theatre in city
When Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore visited Delhi in 1932, the ladies of 'Sen bari' (the family of the famous Dr Hem Chandra Sen) presented a play, 'Balmik Pratibha' for him, in what is believed to be the first instance of a Bengali play being staged in Delhi.
Since then, Bengali theatre in Delhi has grown into a genre of its own. The Chittaranjan Parkbased socio-cultural platform Shapno Ekhon (loosely translated as 'dreaming now'), in collaboration with historians Narayani Gupta and Swapna Liddle, has started a project to document and archive the close to one-hundred-year-old history of Bengali theatre in Delhi.
Begun on May 16 this year, 'Bengali theatre in Delhi — A Journey in Time' aims to features, styles, and content unique to Delhi.
At present, there are around 30 groups engaged in practising Bengali theatre in the city.
'Ishhworer khoje' (Waiting for God) directed by Harihar Bhattacharya, 'Lenin er daak' (The Call of Lenin) by the group Dhumketu, and Manusher Odhikar (The Rights of Humankind) directed by Shakti Mukherjee are a few among the many plays created by playwrights of Delhi in original style and form.
The project, which hopes to take advantage of this scattered movement and helm it into something tangible and substantive, is expected to be completed in three years and will be compiled in the form of multiple publications, an archive of oral history accounts, an anthology of plays in multiple volumes written by playwrights of Delhi, and a database of audio-visual material of plays by practitioners in Delhi.
Mar 13, 2019
Gurugram Kala Utsav
Gurugram Kala Utsav was started in 2017 to celebrate the Indian classical art forms. In its third year now, the annual festival is a cultural amalgam of classical Indian dance forms, such as kathak, bharatnatyam, kuchipudi and odissi, folk music, and Hindustani vocal and instrumental renditions.
Incidentally the festival falls on the same weekend as the popular Gurgaon Utsav, a festival that brings Sufi and fusion music, poetry and dramatic performances to city audiences.
The festival will take place at the Aravalli Biodiversity Park.
The two-day fest is being organised by an Odissi dance academy, and a not-for-profit organisation and supported by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram.
Thakurani Jatra Festival
Preparations for the famous biennial Thakurani Jatra festival in Odisha's Berhampur began with the hoisting of the holy mast or 'shubha khunti'.
According to Desibehera P. Durgaprasad, the traditional head of this festival, the celebrations will start from March 29 and continue for 32 days.
Goddess Budhi Thakurani is the traditional deity of silk handloom weavers or the Dera community of Berhampur.
On the night of March 29, an earthen pot representing the deity would be carried in a procession from the permanent temple to her temporary abode at Desibehera Street.