Making of the Little Gods

The biennial Thakurani Yatra is going on in the silkcity of Odisha (formerly known as Orissa) in India. And you can see a world of changes in the cityscape and there are many a good things that one can notice about this yatra and one of them being the visuals of kids dressed as various mythological characters roaming in the various streets of the city on cycles, bikes and vehicles. Various characters like Krishna, Balram, Ram, Hanuman, Parshuram etc can be seen in most unexpected ways in the city. You can come across a human tiger cycling in the city while a little krishna is being taken home by his parents on the bikes, while Hanuman is walking in the streets.

The thakurani yatra, during which the reigning goddess of the silkcity maa budhi saantani comes to her parental home for a brief visit for about a month. And during this the citizens of the city visit the maa in her makeshift temple in the Desibehera street for paying their visit, devotion and to also to thank the goddess for her blessings. Some people however have an other way to do this by decorating themselves or their children in various mythological and some common characters and bring them to the temple. This a form of Manasika (a promise that the devotee makes to maa for blessing him or her that he or she will dress up or make his or her kids dress up as some gods or goddesses and bring them to the temple for blessings.

There are a dozen or more number of chitralays in city which cater to the needs of such devotees and they take the responsibility of dressing the kids and adults in different characters for some brisk business during this festival in city. Normally while these establishments charge about 200-300 rupees for dressing a kid as Lord Krishna, demand a whopping 800-1000 during this festivals.

The process of dressing the children begins with the children coming over to the Shop and then the experienced artists make up the kids to look like Krishna, Balram, Radha, Hanuman etc. And then some other artists put fitting clothes on the kids and they are good to go.

It takes almost 20-30 minutes to make up someone as Krishna or Radha and a little more for Hanuman and other characters. Some characters like Pilakhai Dahani may take upto a couple of hours and some more characters like Tiger may take almost half a day of time and labor.

The artists who have been decorating the people for almost decades are in need and demand during this festivals. And they make a good earning during the festival too. On an avarage a dozen or more number of kids come to each chitralaya to make up on the first few days of the festival and on sundays the number may reach half century or more and during the later part of the festival each day hundreds of people come to the chitralaya to make up.

This is a rich cultural tradition which has been popular in the silkcity for more than a century and the people who have been in the business of make up artists have been the silent spectator of the events.

This in future will also flourish as the devotion amongst people for Maa Budhi saantani will never end tells one of the eldest artists. Whatever may be the tradition is truly a beautiful one and it should be continued with the same spirit and devotion as it has been continuing for the last more than a century.

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Random Mobile shots - 2

Random Mobile shots

Experiments with my mobile camera

Eversince I purchased the Karbonn Titanium S5 Mobile phone, I had been toying around with taking snaps here and there and posting it on facebook. I did however never try to use it as a Camera untill recently when I noticed that some people are using their mobile cameras to take awesome photos and are posting online too. One of them included my student Joshiya Kumar. I was a big fan of his creativity with his mobile.

So here I am posting a compilation of some of the shots I have taken with my mobile camera. Although the quality of the image is not that good as the dslr I own, but still it is decent and also is handy as it is with me all the time and I can take photos in any situation. Also it requires not much manipulation like the other cameras. Just look at an object and click the shooting button. It is as easy as that.

Wide angle shots with this camera were not as good as the macro shots. The mobile camera is basically a small camera and it has limited facilities. Although in your android enabled mobiles you can add many apps to give your mobile camera some functionalities like the shutter speed, aperture value etc. But believe me they are just trash and do not do what they are intended to do. I have used many apps in the past and then removed them from my mobile because I found the native camera on the android is the best without all those apps. Although ocassionaly I use the picsart app to give effects to some of my photos when I am in hurry to post the images online. Otherwise I usually download the images to my computer and edit them in photoshop, fotor or some other photo editing tool and then give a nice watermark at the bottom and then I post. Doing all these is not much hard too. Many people are doing this and I am also doing the same.

Getting appreciated for your work is the best reward one can deserve. And whenever I have posted photos online people have liked them and I am glad I am shooting with my mobile camera. The camera on my mobile is a 8.0 MP camera, though telling you frankly I doubt it is not that big. It must be a simple VGA camera or a bit higher. Because I used a 7.2 MP camera earlier and the quality of the images with the digital camera was awesome, while with the mobile camera the pictures are just OK.

Anyway, I am presenting some photos here which I have taken with my mobile camera. Hope you like them.