The Stalled Jatra: Effect of Pandemic on the Moving Theatre of Bengal

Abstract:

The folk performing art of jatra which was recently rejuvenated from its vestigial remnants, is once again struggling for survival owing to the impact of the Corona virus pandemic this year. Jatra had dominated the cultural landscape of Bengal during 16th to 19th centuries and was used as a major artistic tool by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to spread the teachings of Vaishnavism among the people of Bengal. With the emergence of television and other forms of entertainment jatra slowly lost its old glory. In the recent years, the Bengal government’s support and some changes within the form have helped it regain some of its earlier popularity. However, the sudden emergence of the pandemic has once again dimmed the light of positivity that was beginning to shine on the art. This paper aims toward understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the performance tradition of jatra and its performers. The paper seeks to critically address and understand the effect of the pandemic through interviews conducted with two prominent jatra artists of the contemporary times thus trying to reflect on the crisis at its grass-root level.

Key Words: Folk art, Bengali theatre, Jatra, Pandemic, Interview, Folk Artist

The Corona virus pandemic this year has called for an abrupt winding up of numerous religious functions, theatre performances, fairs, festivals and other events of cultural significance worldwide. The government-imposed lockdown meant to keep the citizens confined to their homes has harshly affected the life of people and impacted the education, business and economic sectors considerably. Several factories, construction works and private companies have pulled down their shutters, pushing thousands of people towards joblessness and severe economic crisis. One of the worst hit amongst these is the performing arts sector that relies largely on community gathering of physical bodies as performers and audience in a limited space. The government protocol of ‘social distancing’ which emphasizes on practising ‘safe distancing of human bodies’ has become an important measure to avoid community transmission of the virus, but it has also at the same time caused a great uncertainty of livelihood among the theatre practitioners across the world. However, in the history of theatre this is not the first time when the playhouses are closed down on account of a catastrophe that had befallen the nation, the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death in London which resulted in more than ten thousand causalities kept the theatres closed for a lengthy span of time.

Chase Bringardner, Professor and Chair at the Department of Theatre at Auburn University, in a question answer session on ways to tackle the situation of performing arts amidst pandemic comments,
"Performance finds a way. Performance always adapts because it’s an integral part of the human experience and it’s how we all relate to each other and makes sense of the world. "

Thus, instead of completely shutting down their artistic endeavours, several practitioners have moved forward and taken the challenge to keep going even when the world is facing an ‘uncertain halt’. Live streaming of solo performances through digital platforms such as Facebook live, Zoom app, IGTV, Google Meet etc. have become a recent trend. Institutions of National importance such as the Sangeet Natak Academy, the National School of Drama and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts have been streaming archival recorded performances and conducting online webinars for free. While several city-based artists and performers have taken refuge to the digital platforms and have continued practising and promoting their art over the internet, the folk performers whose audience largely belongs to the rural belt, who don’t have access to internet, find it difficult to connect over the virtual media.

The jatra industry of Bengal, the most popular folk performance theatre of the state, is one amongst these severely hit art traditional performative practices facing the wrath of the pandemic without an escape into the virtual world during isolation. The word -‘Jatra’-is derived from ‘the root word ya- to go’ which means going or moving. An amalgamation of music, dance and drama, jatra three to four hour long, open-air theatrical performance held in rural and urban settlements in different parts of Bengal, Orissa and Assam. Highly operatic in nature, this form originated in a religious context and as part of semi ritualistic practices, similar to other traditional folk performances in India, before developing into a widely acknowledged form of mass entertainment. Jatra is also known as jatrapala ( -Pala refers to long narrative poems that are sung and acted ). Originally designed to educate the people (lok siksha), the jatra essentially acts as a form of mass culture that celebrates everyday lives of common people (folk), enriches mass consciousness and influences the lifestyle of the people.

The sober and soothing months of October to June are predominantly significant for the jatra performers of Bengal. It is that time of the year when a cluster of troupes, colloquially known as the ‘jatra parties’, travel all over Bengal staging more than a hundred shows in different corners of the state. These travelling troupes perform mythological tales, stories from the epics and other modern secular plays reflecting on various contemporary issues of the society. Colourful life-sized hoardings, jatra pamphlets and extravagant advertisements in newspapers become a customary tea table talk in the Bengali household during winters. While the Bengali bhadralok (elite class) abstains itself from watching these jatrapala, which to their eyes are ‘obscene’ and which they consider solely a cultural product of lower strata, the agrarian gentleman of the countryside never fails to attend such dramatic performances staged anyplace nearby. On the night of the jatra, spectators from near and far can be seen arriving hours before the performance with their chatai (mat), madur (straw mats) and torches to the performance venue (an open stage with spectators on four sides) hoping to grab a perfect viewing position. People from adjacent villages arrive with their families in bicycles, tractors, bullock carts and return after the show ends, generally a few hours past midnight. Each of these jatra shows manages to attract around four to five thousand people who squat down close to each other under temporary shade (or a tent) made of tarpaulin sheets.

The essence of the folk tradition of jatra lies in its live performances, its intimate relation with its audience established with the help of its repertoire of songs, dances and its extravagancy of caricatures by a group of performers, performing in close proximity to each other. For the jatra actor, whom Utpal Dutt defines as “remarkable, truly a people’s artist” staying away from the ‘people’ and that too ‘for the people’ due to the upsurge of the pandemic is a real challenge. To a jatra performer, the Bengali months of Chaitra, Baisakh and Jaistha are extremely engaging both in terms of performance schedule and economic profit. It is this time of the season, when the bookings are at peak and there is a show almost everyday. As a popular Bengali proverb goes on “baro mase tero parbon” (Thirteen festivals in twelve months), one of the main reasons for the bookings, is the ‘abundance of festivity’, mainly of several local village deities during these months. Jatra shows are organized in villages on the occasion of Dharmarajer Gajon (festival associated with Hindu deity Dharmaraj), Chadak (festival in honour of Lord Shiva at the time of Chaitra Sangkranti), Nagpanchami (worship of snake), Basanti Puja(ritual worshipping of Durga during Bengali month of Basanta) and several others. The Kolkata based jatra dals (troupes) charge around sixty thousand to one lakh for one night’s show. Losing a day’s performance during the peak season can cost severe financial loss to a jatra troupe. Kolkata’s Chitpur, better known as the ‘jatra district of Bengal’ harbours around forty to sixty such troupes with each of them employing a lot people as performers, musicians, sound and light technicians, helpers, managers, cooks, stage managers, pandal builders and several others. While everyone in a jatra troupe ranging from performers to helpers is daily wage earner, i.e one works on ‘no work no pay’ basis, the payment ranges from nine thousand a night for some (mainly the lead actors) to a meagre amount of four hundred per night for other employees.

The Jatra Season:

The jatra performance season begins at the time of Durga Puja and is performed throughout the Bengali months of Aghran, Poush, Ashwin, Kartik, Magh, Falgun, Chaitra and Baisakh. Since, it is an open air theatre, the performing season ends a few days before the monsoon arrives. Even during this period, maximum shows are staged during the four months from Magh to Baisakh i.e the duration between January to May. Before the performance season begins, rehearsals are held during the months of August and September in rented lodges and halls where the artists gather and prepare for the show. The advance bookings and other background preparations for the season are mainly made in the months of June and July, three to four months before the performances. The jatra season begins around mid-October and, continues and up to the month of April/May the following year.

Interview with Anubhab Dutta:

Anubhab Dutta is the lead actor of Swarnamanjari Opera this year. Anubhab Babu has been associated with jatra for 24 years. He began his artistic journey as an actor with Bhairab Opera’s jatrapala Jibon Ek Junction in 1995-1996. Apart from jatra he has been a part of several Bengali soap operas and films. He is currently the joint secretary of Sangrami Jatra Prahari (Jatra Artist Union) and a guest member of the Paschimbanga Jatra Academy in Kolkata. He is an active fraternity member of the Jatra Training Workshops which trains new actors. He is also one of the editors of the Sangrami Jatra Prahari’s yearly magazine ‘Uraan’.

Q: The months from October-May/June are considered to be ‘the busiest’ for the jatra performers but 2020 in particular has been an exception on account of the pandemic. How are you spending your time this year?

AD: Initially, when the government imposed the nationwide lockdown on 22nd of March it didn’t bother us much. We were exhausted after staging shows tirelessly through half of the season, beginning right after Durga Puja and looked at ‘the lockdown’ as a few days of leisure and relaxation. We were sure that this will end by the 31st of the month and from first of April we will once again begin our shows. Although when the lockdown kept extending even after 31st of March, it worried us. Our pre booked shows gradually started to get cancelled one after the other. We still hoped for favourable conditions to revive but when the lockdown extended beyond Paila baisakh (first day of Baisakh, widely celebrated as the Bengali New Year), it worried us and we were helpless. There were news all over the daily paper and T.V channels about how the policemen were trying to administer the situation and the steady rise in the infection graph was a clear indication of the worsening conditions.

For an artist it is very tough to sit back at home during the peak season. However, considering the still situation, that’s what one has to do. I have been trying to keep myself busy with reading books, spending much time on riyaz (music rehearsals), practising hours of elocution that really helps in clarifying pronunciation and spending several hours in the gym.

Q: How has this COVID- 19 pandemic and weeks of lockdown affected the performance genre of jatra and the huge circle of performing artists related to this field?

AD: The months of Chaitra and Baisakh are very crucial for the jatra artists. This year’s shows were halted at a time when we could have easily done sixty more shows in a span of ninety days. Major income of the artists comes from performing continuously during these three months and the ‘stay at home order’ has clearly affected our income. Several of our shows have been cancelled and our community of artists are quite unsure about their future. Our productions this year have tremendously been affected; we could not successfully complete our season. The earning from these months not only sustains the performers until the next season, but it also helps the producers use the money collected to set up next year’s troupe. The lockdown has hampered our next year’s production as well. For example, on the day of Rathyatra the posters for the next seasons are released, new palas are named and even some bookings take place. The entire plan for the next season has been delayed, there is delay in bookings, delay in playwriting etc. This year the producers are not sure whether the season will begin after puja, so advance booking of actors are at stake and thus the actors have lost money and professional security. With the advance money that the artists receive, they have a good time during the pujas but this year most of them had to return empty handed, there is no work, no advance and the savings of the early shows are already gone.

Q: How is the government helping the jatra artists to cope with the extreme economic uncertainty that they are facing?

AD: We have appealed to the government for financial assistance, but haven’t heard back or received support from the Central government or the State government till now. Though, after looking at the present financial situation of the country, we cannot totally blame the government for this delay. Most of the country’s production and manufacturing have come to a halt and the country itself is suffering from a huge economic crisis. We have seen the government providing assistance when we were hit by natural calamities like cyclone Bulbul and Aila because there wasn’t such economic instability at that time but this time thee is less possibility. However, the scheme for free distribution of ration started by the government is helping a lot of poor people and several of our artists have also benefited from it.

Apart from that, we the members of the Sangrami Jatra Prahari (the artist’s union) have come together to provide help to our fellow artists. The SJP has taken an initiative and started a Corona Relief Fund for the artists to which several leading artists of the jatra fraternity and our admirers have contributed. The amount raised was distributed among fifty -one artists the first time and to thirty-one others the next time. At a personal level, I have provided assistance to an amateur troupe from Durgapur.

Q: Art forms around the world are trying to respond to the present situation in their own ways. Will the ‘pandemic situation’ emerge as one of the major themes on the jatra repertoire too?

AD: It’s true that on the jatra stage we have always tried to bring up the urgent issues of time, but we seriously don’t want to see COVID- 19 as a major theme. Each and everyone of us wants to erase memory of the pandemic that has shaken us mentally, physically and emotionally. In a hundred years time this is the first time we have faced something like this. Obviously in the coming years, there will be dialogues and catchphrases in almost every jatrapala relating to coronavirus, it cannot be completely avoided. Dialogues as part of awareness initiative will keep recurring in the form of farce, comedy, tragedy and some information about social distancing, cleanliness, about understanding personal relationships during time of crisis will also be there. For example, few days back a song was composed by Samiran Das about the pandemic:
Emon byadhi dilo China, dawa dilo na.
Moroner arek naam, holo Corona
Are elo Corona, made in China.
(What a disease has China given, but has not given the medicine
The other name of death is Corona, its Corona
Are! There comes Corona, Made in China.)

But that will be all; these type of songs, funny jokes will keep coming; some will take them seriously while others will treat it just an element to infuse humour.

Q: The auspicious occasion of Rathyatra is important for the jatra performers. By this time most of the troupes release their plans for the new season. However, this year the celebration was a small affair. How are you trying to start the rehearsals for the upcoming season?

AD: We haven’t thought anything about next year’s rehearsals. In August, a meeting has been scheduled with Minister Aroop Biswas (Minister of Public Works and Youth Services & Sports of West Bengal) with three bodies of our jatra committee. Once we get green signal from the government, we will start our rehearsals. It is very important to get government assurance before beginning rehearsals because it requires quite an investment, from advance payment of actors to booking a place for rehearsal. Even if we successfully commence the rehearsals following social distancing, what if we don’t get the permit to perform publicly in open grounds? We will be at a great loss. That’s why we are waiting for the ministry to look into our issue and future decisions depend on the scheduled meeting.

Q: This pandemic has pushed several art forms and artists to adapt to the digital space and quite a number of them have already moved forward with this challenge. Do you think the folk theatre of jatra can use the online platform and survive the pandemic? Are there any online initiatives already taken up by the practitioners?

AD: Performing in digital space is like “dudher sadh ghole metano” (satisfying the desire for milk with butter-milk) because the jatra repertoire swells with vibrancy and enthusiasm, of which the spectators are a significant part. I will give you several reasons why jatra cannot be performed online:-
Firstly, for a jatra artist it becomes a very challenging task to perform without being surrounded by its enthusiastic spectators; it is through the spectator’s claps of appreciation, their hoots and uproarious cheers that the jatra artist obtains his validation.

Secondly, for a season we prepare one particular jatrapala or maybe two, which is then performed several times at different places, maybe a hundred times or more than that. In the digital platform once the jatra is telecasted everyone who has a phone with steady internet connection can view it. It is not possible for us to showcast a new jatra every week or everyday.

Third, on the digital platform there is no scope for improvisation or ‘on stage’ changes. Once a play is recorded, everyone views that single recording and the play is judged on that basis. But, when we perform live before audience, we improvise our shows in accordance with the locale audience’s preference. For example, when we perform in Bankura, the audience there prefer more exaggerated emotions and actions, the audience of Purba Medinipur prefer more calm composed and melodious performance and in South 24 Paraganas, they prefer a mixture of action, music, emotion, melody. So, we rehearse the same jatra in different ways, adding some dialogues and subtracting some according to the preference of the audience. But if presented online, it is impossible to implement all these changes in a single video. Thus, our audience from every part remains dissatisfied and the quality of the play, the playwright and the performer is judged wrong.

Also, performing on an online platform will not bring in any monetary gain.

Q: There is a famous saying “Jatrai loksikkha hoi” meaning jatra is an important cultural tool for educating people, mainly from the hinterlands. How have you, the representatives of jatra tried to make the people aware about this pandemic?

AD: As I have already told you, its impossible for an artist to sit back at home. Like other creative industries such as Bollywood and, Tollwood, we have also taken up the responsibility of keeping our fans and admirers informed and aware about this pandemic. We have made an awareness video titled ‘Mora Achi, Mora Thakbo’ (We are here, we will remain) from the Sanrami Jatra Prahari Unit. I have directed, acted and coordinated the entire video with help from my peers from the industry. Mitali Cakraborty, Navaneel Raychowdhury, Amit Kanti Ghosh, Manjil Bannerjee and others from the jatra industry have helped and guided me. Several top artists of the jatra industry Anal Chakraborty, Kakoli Chowdhury, Deep- Jina, Anik Chatterjee, Raju Barua, Subhayu Chakravborty, have contributed significantly to this video.

Q: As we already know jatra is an open-air theatre where shows are performed on temporary stages built in open fields with the spectators assembled around the performance arena on all four sides. How do you plan to stage post-pandemic shows by following the norms of social distancing? What will be the strategies for audience management in an open performance space like jatra?

AD: We have obviously thought of some measures that we would be implementing while staging shows post-pandemic. Most of the sectors have started reopening, so why not us? We also want to be back on the stage after taking necessary measures. In 2020 the Durga Pujo is going to start late, so we still have plenty of time before our season begins. If a vaccine is found by then, it’s good or else we will follow some rules. At the moment, we have decided a few measures such as, we will keep ourselves clean, undergo the sanitization process several times during a show. We will script our shows in such a way so that we can avoid body contact to a maximum extent. The performance arena will be sanitized before the pala begins. The microphones will be sanitized and our performers will be trained to deliver dialogues after maintaining a particular distance from the mics. The performance arena and the green room area will be well sanitized. The green room area shall be protected from unnecessary entry of committee members and there will be well spaced seating arrangement for the audience with mandatory use of mask. If all these can be followed, there can be shows once again.

Kakoli Choudhury’s Statement

Kakoli Choudhury, of the famous Kakoli Choudhury –Anal Chakraborty juti (pair), the number one pair of the contemporary jatra world has been performing since 1984, for nearly three decades now. She began her career as part of Jagatjayee Opera as a junior artist in the jatrapala titled Jayar Sangsar, along with her mother. Kakoli Choudhury, her mother Kajol Choudhury and brother Romeo Choudhury have been ardent performers of jatra. For her, performing a hundred and fifty shows (on an average) each jatra season is a cakewalk. This pandemic has, however, left the star actress in a lurch and she is uncertain of her future and the future of live performances. Choudhury, whose livelihood has been interrupted by COVID-19 Pandemic says,
“This whole situation is unthinkable and quiet helpless for us, for the entire world and for everyone else. In our lifetime we haven’t come across something like this, there are words going around that 100 years ago in 1920 the world faced such a pandemic. If you ask me I will say, at the beginning like everyone else even I believed that we were facing the wrath of nature and paying a price for our behaviour towards nature. I had a show on 18th of March and on 19th of March. Until then I couldn’t presume things were going to take such a devastating turn. We kept waiting for this pandemic to end but slowly the entire months of April, May, June and half of July have already passed and we are still sitting back at our home. Meanwhile, there was this long lockdown, there were news coming up everyday how people were facing scarcity of food, news of unemployment and about the plight of migrant workers. Believe me, we the jatra shiplis (artists) are also one amongst those who have seen the worst of time during this pandemic.

For the jatra shilpis these five months are very important. We sustain our families for twelve months of the year with the money we earn performing during these five months. Naturally, this pandemic situation is a major setback for us; it has devastated us and broken us from within. Specially, our junior artists who already survive on a very low income, for them it is a very difficult situation. As you already are quiet aware, our industry isn’t economically very prosperous, few of the senior artists earn a good amount but for the junior artists it’s a real challenge. It’s impossible to control your tears when you look at their condition; they are left with no food, no resources, and no money. From our artists union we are trying to help them, but how long can we continue to help them and how long is it possible for them to survive with someone’s help? The prime time of our season has been severely hampered, leaving us artists empty handed for four long months now. What hurts most is the negligence of the media towards our art form, towards this industry of folk theatre. There are several small news channels that have come up and taken our interviews such as ETV Bharat, R. Plus but other than that, the media has failed us severely. Jatra, which is a five hundred year old art form and a significant ‘folk performance’ of the state that bears the cultural identity of Bengal, has been completely neglected by the media houses. They have failed to inform the people about the woe we are going through. We have tried to remain positive, using various social platforms we have tried to boost up the people, our co-workers, we have tried awakening our mass audience, and we have tried to maintain the positivity instead of giving up on this battle of survival. I will tell you my personal experience how even after trying to stay positive I have become severely depressed thinking about the present situation, it has been several times at night that I wake up traumatized and start rehearsing my scenes from the play, I have been so severely depressed that two days ago I started wailing and crying, I was traumatised thinking if I can ever return to the stage? I know everything will fall into place with time, everyone will start working again. After a few days, the electioneering will start but will there be no election meetings? Will there be no political rallies? If everything can take place following the government rules of social distancing and sanitization, why should our work stop? If everything can take place, why does the entertainment industry need to see a dead end? This industry support several people, such as the jatra artists, the macha artists, the singers, the tents owners, the stage crew, the technicians, the bus owners, the make-up people, the dress industry, the man who sells nuts in the pandals and other hawkers. All of us whose earning has been ceased, the government has to think about us, the authorities need to think about the performing artists community, it needs to think that with every person who has lost his/ her earning there are other four hungry stomachs attached to it. I don’t want to preach against any one or I don’t shelter hard feelings for any other artists but the media today is more interested in showing what the cinema and the serial artists are cooking in lockdown, how they are cleaning their clothes and sweeping their floors, but no one cares to show the plight we jatra artists are undergoing. No one is ready to showcase the struggle for existence the poor artists are going through every single day.

The media needs to re-assess their understanding of our value and importance. Several people are coming out claiming that the live shows might not survive this pandemic and the artist should take up other jobs in other fields but why should we do that? We are artists and we represent art and that’s what we will continue to do. We excel in this field, what we can best do is ‘act’ and we cannot stay without ‘acting’. If not this season, we hope to come back the next season with full vigour. If Corona continues to persist the next season or maybe for next the several years, we will put up shows accordingly. Several film and television soaps have started their shooting wearing mask, we will also take some steps. Though jatra can’t be performed wearing mask but the audience can always wear mask and maintain social distance. We will change ourselves according to the changing times, the changing environment.”

In Kakoli Di’s (short for elder sister in Bengali) opinion the very use of the term ‘social distancing’ is inaccurate as human beings are social organisms and it is impossible for them to exist if they are socially distanced. For her it is rather the distancing of terrestrial human bodies, is important and not distancing of social relations.

In conclusion, the COVID 19 pandemic has hit the jatra practitioners hard, leaving them in a perplexed situation and suffering from a severe cultural and existential anxiety. This global crisis has struck at the core of several other live performance arts along with jatra. The interviews provide an insight into the challenges that the folk practitioners of the art are facing at different levels during the pandemic. Apart from the economic crisis which is a major concern, it is also suffering from harsh discrimination in the hands of the media, which fails to draw the attention of the government and the citizen thus abating the artist’s cause and reducing the chance of securing assistance. However, both the actors, who are the stalwarts of the field, are very hopeful about the changing conditions and are eager to begin their journey once again with new ways of performance. For them, performance remains as an integral part of their life and they are determined the pass the hurdles put forth by the pandemic.

NOTE

The statement and the interview were conducted online using questionnaire method and also telephonic conversations. The pictures were taken on 29th of October 2020 when I attended a show of Anubhab Babu’s jatrapala ‘Pabita Papi’ held at Manik Bazar village in Bankura district. The other collected images have their sources mentioned. The detail of the jatra season is presented as explained by the artists. All the translations from Bengali to English are done by the author.

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Kuntalika Jharimune, Research Scholar. Deparment of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 221005. E-mail- jharimune.kuntalika1993@gmail.com