3/7/2014

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BASANTA UTSAV I N BLACK & WHI TE

POSTED BY: Shubhashis Mitra COMMENTS: 5 Comments

BASANTA UTSAV I N BLACK & WHI TE

Ex actly when the Basanta Utsav was conceived and ex ecuted by Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan cannot be confirmed; but it is said that in 1907AD, Vasanta Utsava was first celebrated on Basanta Panchami day. Seasonal festivals of Santiniketan started to take shape by that decade, sometimes urged by Samindranth the youngest son of Rabindranath, at times just to liven up the spirit of the Tapovana styled school. Rabindranath was naturally very much absorbed in ex perimenting and innovating ideas in his school and the concept of Visva Bharati University was just taking shape then.
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Basanta Utsav at Amrakunja, prior to the days of Jawhar Bedi, was arranged on the floor of Amrakunja on Alpona decorated ground, to stage the pulsating song & dance recitals to invoke spring. Perhaps at that time the procession dance was not in vogue. The presence of Palash flower remains the identifying factor for photographs being related to Basanta Utsav. This is supposed to be the only photograph of Rabindranath at Basanta Utsav at Rabindra Bhavan archives; the identifying factor here has been the two Palash sticks adorning the flower vase on the ground. The stage d cor looks really beautiful; a fragrance of the simplistic yet deeply involved life style of that era.

Holi, the brilliant episode of love & frolic of Radha & Krishna, is a national festival of India, being observed with much glee from almost time immemorial. It is a sheer wonder how Rabindranath Tagore transformed that festival into the celebration of season spring aided by a few songs and the innovative dance movements created by the dance teachers of that era. None other than Nandalal Bose & Surendranath Kar continuously developed the dress-sense for this festival. The snap above appears to be of a much later era, considering the presence of the rather large spectator group. Compared to the first photograph this one contains more grown up ladies; suggesting that it was an era when boys and girls were equally represented in Santiniketan. It will be interesting to note here that when the Bramhacharya-ashram was an all boys school; Rabindranath
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persuaded a dance teacher from Manipur to join the school, yet could not proclaim that he was starting a dance course in his school, because it was unthinkable of boys to take part in dance in the civilized society of Bengal. The impression given to the guardians was that Physical Drilling classes were being introduced. Much later when Natir Puja was staged in Kolkata for the first time on a commercial opera house, Gouri Bhanja being the Nati and naturally the leading/ only lady dancer in that play; the audience at Kolkata got stunned by watching a Bengali lady dance on stage! At that time no lady from a respectable family dared to dance in a public show on stage. It was a path breaking effort from Santiniketan. Naturally Rabindranath was much acclaimed by stalwarts of theatre world of Kolkata for this pioneering venture; and also severely criticized, especially by women groups, for allowing respectable ladies to dance on stage. These specific groups lamented the moral degradation of the Bengali civilized society! To be more categorical Rabindranath Tagore created a platform on which boys and girls of Bengal could actually dance with a stunningly beautiful and dignified grace. Basanta Utsav is actually a creation of a living form of art; a painting on the living canvass of life, ex ecuted only in our own Santiniketan.

Basanta Utsav at Amra Kunja had its own flavour as the presence of generous number of mostly mango trees created intricate nook and corners for the spectators; provided quite a few bends and turns for the procession dancers. Dancing in open nature is a very different stimulation of aesthetic dynamics than dancing on erected stages. The natural ambience of Amrakunja was never recreated when the festival shifted to other venues. These days students of Patha Bhavan
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are trying to recreate the old mood of Basanta Utsav by celebrating Basanta Abahan at Amrakunja, the invoking of spring, in more or less the same format, without ofcourse using the colouring powder Abir. Last year I attended Basanta Abahan by Patha Bhavan students and it was beauty of Santiniketan at its best.

I do not know who this lovely lady is, in this great collage of successive Basanta Utsavs in Santiniketan. If she is looking from somewhere at this photograph, I would like to thank her immensely for again coming alive amongst us with such grace and beauty. For all of us it has always been scintillating to feel our inner beauty at perfect synchronization with the mystic smiles of spring; it was always sweetly pulsating to let music and dance drown our senses; it was always a sheer joy to embrace others with plenty of colour.

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I was fairly bemused at this snap! I distinctly remembered that in our days kids were allowed to go for this Kathi Nach(Stick Dance); a simplistic one than the one performed by the elder students. Usually there used to be a huge fracas, as the more wild ones among we kids, invariably used the sticks to playfully hit the others around him. We even tried our hands at pulling down the Dhotis of others with a little tug of the sticks! Considering the tremendous trouble endeared by we kids, when elders painstakingly draped us with this incredible wizardry called a Dhoti; pulling down the Dhoti was really a catastrophe for us. So we used to be ex tra careful to protect our pride; and hence the period before the procession dance, we used to be super alert to foil such evil designs by our mischievous friends. That was hilarious time. We enjoyed every ounce of those moments. When the procession dance started we just flowed in to the scene like little angels on flight!

When a kid, we always were amazed at our elder sisters for taking so much trouble to dress up for just one procession dance, and dismissed the thought as one of those typical girlish mysteries which can not be ex plained by any rational soul on Earth! Later when we grew up, we started to realize the inherent pulsation of beauty manifested within each woman; we started to feel a hitherto unknown ex plicit ex pression beauty of ex istence and greatly enjoyed being together with the girls in such occasions.
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In short, we boys, learnt to appreciate and accept beauty as a basic truth of life and we are thankful to all the girls for conveying us the message with absolute lan on Basanta Utsav morning. It was great to bask in beauty; hopefully it still is!

The turban-clad lad, decades and decades back, appears to be in a real contemplation-or can be a little bewildered underneath as well, at this sticky job with a fairly energetic lady! We enjoyed seemingly impossible dance pairs; contrasting in styles and attitude; to dance together creating new chemistry within themselves. Lots of hearts fluttered; eyes sparkled; faces lit up-campus gossip found newer topics to charge the community up for a few weeks. Finding a lady partner for this procession dance was quite an intriguing job; some could chose from several of his girl friends and some had to search hard for the destined one! I reckon the story might just be similar for the ladies too. Many permanent relations took shape in between the colourful mingling of minds.

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Basant or spring tiptoed in Santiniketan right after the winter. Rabindranath Tagore readily felt the playful rhythm of spring, composed songs, which made nature in spring literally a living entity within everyones mind. The nuances of such rhythms allowed many fleet footed participants dance merrily along. I often wondered about how Tagore created songs specifically meant for dance recitals. Technically it should require a superb sense of rhythm, which Rabindranath inherently possessed, along with brilliant insight by the dance composers of that era. At this point of time while Tagore is still very much a luminary; we hardly hear about the dance composers of those days who initiated and gave shape to the brilliant idea of Santiniketan-i Dance visualized by Tagore. In fact Santiniketan was an idea built by many contributors, in many forms, all through the early phases. It was an institutionalized effort with a strong visionary of remarkable clarity at the helm. Amazingly, among all other activities in Santiniketan, dance has remained perhaps the least polluted by the course of time. I feel like paying a honest homage to the great dance composers of that phase in Santiniketan; they made the foundation so strong and natural that till date the flow has remained as vibrant as ever.
Cgnnr d L` mf t ` f d English

This is an interesting snap of spectators atop mango trees on the Basanta Utsav day around the Jawhar Bedi. This was a regular scene in our school days. In one such occasion, people atop along with a branch of a mango tree, collapsed on the spectators below creating a nasty accident. That was the last time Basanta Utsav was held in Amrakunja. From the very nex t year the ceremony was held at Gour Prangana to avoid recurrence of such accidents. Celebration of Basanta Utsav ultimately was torn off from Amrakunja; crowd management became understandably a top priority; the lap of Ashrama, the Amrakunja, became sultry in Basanta Utsav day, from that year onwards!
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What does Beauty mean? How to feel the pulse of beauty? How to structure the basic formats on which the concept of beauty builds up? These are some probing thoughts, which arise in our minds consciously or subconsciously on such occasions in Santiniketan. Generally on the Basant Utsav day we remain dazed and
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soaked in beauty in Santiniketan. The turn of events is usually so varied and colourful that the day ends, even before the feeling has really sunk in. I have often thought about these aspects of Beauty especially referring to Basant Utsav; and each time the answer was illusive. The huge metamorphosis of a large number of people into a different plane altogether is a rather powerful transformation, but without any tangible ex planation. This ofcourse suits the elusive and fleet footed characteristic of spring very well. But one thing I feel for sure that on the very Basanta Utsav day I, like many others, am always able to establish a personal relation with a very abstract idea Beauty. On that day Beauty is always a very close companion to many of us and we freely indulge in an ex pressive interaction with our own long time friend Beautyan ex perience hardly ever recreated on any other time. Naturally, Basanta Utsav revolves around this unique concept of Beauty and we remain ever thankful to Rabindranath for enabling us to visualize Beauty with rare clarity, basking in the morning sun of Basanta Utsav.

Unfortunately in 2013 the whole Basanta Utsava celebration has been ripped off from the grounds of Ashrama to be thrown at the Purva Palli Mela Ground; the effect of which remains unknown till this years celebration on 25March 2013. It seems that an era has definitely ended in Santiniketan. Beauty will hitherto take up newer dimensions; hopefully the new ex perience will remain cherish able.

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5 Comments
Shyamal Mazumder
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March 23, 2013 at 11:34 am

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