Chitpore bounces back with rural Bengal jatra shows

KOLKATA: As many as 32 jatra artistes and technicians of Swarnomanjari Opera are finally breathing easy. Having performed for four nights across villages in Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia, these travelling troupe members, headquartered in Chitpore, are looking forward to the resurrection of the interest in the folk theatre form that has been the primary source of entertainment in rural Bengal.
There is some light at the end of the tunnel for the 35-odd folk theatre troupe owners of Chitpore, who suffered a loss of approximately Rs 20 crore due to the pandemic. Manjil Banerjee, president of Songrami Jatra Prohori, was happy that police permissions were easily coming through now. “Each producer owns multiple troupes in Chitpore. Because of the pandemic, they have reduced the number of troupes performing in jatras this year. I have written five palas this year and am acting in Rupamanjari Opera’s ‘Protimar Chokhe Jol’ with Piya Sengupta. Our first show will be on January 16,” Banerjee said.
The audience at a jatra show of 'Kolonkita Nayok'
Subir Chatterjee, vice-president of Paschim Banga Jatra Sammelan and director of Swarnomanjari Opera, is hoping that business will be back in full swing in January. “Agragami Opera and Chaitya Opera have also started performing. In jatra, we follow the Bengali calendar. Some 10 groups are beginning rehearsals so that they can begin their performances by the Bengali month of Magh. In November, we had our first show on an open field in Midnapore’s Haripur. The stage measured 18ft by 20ft. Some 5,000-odd people thronged to watch our brand new pala titled ‘Kolonkito Nayok’ accompanied by live music.”
Kumar Sanju, the lead actor of ‘Kolonkito Nayok’, can’t forget the euphoria of the 13,000 people who braved a freezing cold night in Balarampur to watch his pala. “We started at 9.30pm and the pala ended post midnight. I know people who rode bikes and drove over 40km to watch the jatra. My dialogues were greeted with resounding claps and whistles. We were shivering in the cold, but the audience wanted more. They even came up on stage and offered me money,” he said, adding that he even had to entertain requests of performing five extra songs once the pala was over. One among them had to be performed in the local Purulia dialect.
“We improvised and our musician had to play the tabla so that it sounded like the ‘maadol’. People were craving entertainment and it seemed they wanted to watch the jatra to get over the fear of the pandemic,” he said.
Prashanta Saha, the director of Agragami Opera starring popular jatra artistes Anol and Kakoli, has done one show of their ‘Bisarjaner Pore’ on November 25. According to him, the response was just the way it was before the pandemic. “We had rented Regal Hall for our 35-member group and rehearsed for 25 days before staging this pala. The entire unit stayed there and rehearsed twice daily. There were some 4,000 people in Midnapore,” Saha said.