Urus celebrations

CHIKHALGAON URUS

On 8 February 2012, the village of Chikhalgaon began their annual Urus celebrations. The Urus is a festival held in every village in most parts of Maharashtra. It is a collective effort by the whole village where every family contributes to the organisation of the festival. The Urus consists of religious discourses and entertainment for the people in the village and neighbouring villages.

The Urus began with collective religious singing known as bhajans. The bhajans were followed by pravachans, which are religious sermons preached by a religious teacher, who interprets ancient religious scriptures for the people. The bhajans and pravachans continued till the night in the Bhairavnath temple. In the afternoon, a canvas marquee was set up in the temple courtyard. The bhajans and pravachans which were taking place shifted to the marquee outside the temple. In the night, there was a kirtan recital. A kirtan is a solo devotional recital which includes story telling accompanied with social messages. The audience for the kirtan comprised of around 60 men and 15 women. The kirtan singer, known as a kirtankar, was shown great respect by the people of the village, and was given the title of ‘Maharaj’ which means a person of great knowledge. The kirtankar was named Sakahare Maharaj. He had come from the town of Amravati in Eastern Maharashtra. The musicians who were accompanying him in his performance were from the village itself. There were two mridangams, 1 harmonium, around 20 manjiras and the Maharaj himself was playing the tanpura.

He started his performance with details about the origins of kirtan singing. He explained that kirtans were performed in Indra’s court in heaven. The practice had descended to earth with the birth of Saint Tukaram. There were a lot of social messages embedded in the stories narrated by the Maharaj. He talked about why people should be doing things suited for their age, by giving an example of an old man trying in vain to learn religious scriptures. He then shifted the audience’s attention to the corrupting influence of power. He mentioned the recently concluded elections, and how politicians made false promises to the villagers. He said that everyone aspires to have power and have people under their control, and that this was normal. But when this desire to control gets out of hand, it can get dangerous.

The kirtankar then moved on to the topic of immortality and death and how death was inevitable. He stressed that nothing can give humans immortality and that people should not have false hopes about gaining immortality. This was followed by a song which emphasised the importance of death and suffering. After this, he talked about the poet Kabir and recited one of his poems which talked about how minuscule man was compared to the might of God. His talk was not just about serious religious issues. To add interest, he narrated an incident about a trip of his to Mumbai as a child.

After this his talk moved on to the consequences of greed, giving an example of Ravan, the king of Lanka. Ravan was extremely prosperous, yet he wanted more. This greed ultimately led to his downfall. Then he compared human greed with animal behaviour, and said that those who are greedy are actually lesser human than others. The Maharaj then talked about how important saints are in India. He emphasised that saints are the messengers of God, and their social importance exceeds that of God itself.

The Maharaj talked about how Maharashtra has been fragmented by politics. He mocked the elections which had recently been concluded in most of rural Maharashtra. He said that a strong unifying force was needed which would bring the people together for a common cause. He gave an example of Shivaji, the ruler of Maharashtra during the late 17th century. Shivaji’s kingdom had been formed by uniting small fragmented territories controlled by warlords. He soon forged a large kingdom with a large army in place where previously there had been no order and governance. He then talked about how Shivaji used to respond to any attack over his people. The Maharaj talked about how some people come into your own territory and then attack you. He gave an example of this from Shivaji’s time and compared it to modern day terrorism. He also preached unity between religions. He narrated a story about a young Muslim boy named Madari, who was helped by Shivaji, because his village had been attacked. Later, Madari became one of Shivaji’s most trusted lieutenants. He ended the program with a message on caste equality in the village, encouraging people to stop believing in the caste system.

The next afternoon, men cooked in place of women. The Urus is the only occasion where the men do everything, right from cooking and serving to washing dishes. This is the only time of the year when the women don’t have to cook. This day was the main day of the Urus.  After the lunch cooked by the men, there were pravachans till the night for a wider audience. People from other villages visited Chikhalgaon on this day.

In the night, at around 11pm, the main entertainment of the Urus began. The audience mostly consisted of families, unlike the audience on the night before. There were a total of around 600 people for this event. Unlike the kirtans, this event had a minimal religious significance, and it was mostly aimed towards entertaining the village. The venue of the event was in an open field near a Rama temple. There were at least three stalls selling vada-pavs, chocolates, cookies and beedis. A stage was set up for the performers. Before the main events began, there was a group of musicians performing bhajans.

The main characters in the theatrical performance were Saint Tukaram, his wife Jija, their son and daughter, and a sadhu and his disciple. The distinguishing feature of this performance was that there were no women acting at all. Women’s roles were portrayed by men dressed as women. The theatrical performance began with a long shloka, after which there was a short bhajan by the musicians. Tukaram enters, followed by his wife. She is constantly nagging him about his way of earning a living. She wants him to do ‘real’ work, instead of preaching and begging for alms. Their children enter, asking for food. But there was none in their house. Jija shouts at Tukaram for being such a careless father. To vent her anger, she beats up her children and exits. The crying children go to Tukaram for help. He calms them down and agrees to go and bring them food, and leaves followed by the children. The sadhu and his disciple enter. The sadhu preaches about how happiness will always be followed by sadness. He talked about how sadhus are the closest people to God. His behaviour is clearly classist and he believes that sadhus should be given a lot of respect.

Then both of them start talking about food. They both agree that Tukaram has more influence than them, and therefore they should go to his house to ask for food. When they reach there, a comic scene takes place where the sadhu teaches his disciple how to ask for alms. Then they both call out for food, and are answered by Jija’s shouts. She said that there was absolutely no food in the house, and people like sadhus should be working instead of asking for alms. Both of them feel offended as well as scared. Tukaram and Jija’s children enter, and praise the sadhu and the disciple. Jija gets angry at this and starts beating up the children. The sadhu and the disciple feel Tukaram should ask his wife to behave. Tukaram enters and the sadhu says that he was a hypocrite, because while he asks for alms, his wife does not give food to anyone. Tukaram tries to calm Jija down to no avail. This was followed by a comic scene where Jija insults the sadhu and his disciple. Tukaram gives up trying to talk to Jija and says that he’ll get some food for the sadhus. He exits and returns with a plate full of food and gives them to the sadhu. Jija tries to stop the sadhu from taking it, and causes the plate to fall and spoil the food.

This scene was followed by a comic scene where the disciple drops a sack of flour on the sadhu. The sadhu goes to his house to change and askes his disciple to keep guard and not let anyone in. When the disciple is waiting, a lady comes to meet the sadhu. The disciple and the lady start chatting and talk about her daughter. The scene slowly transforms into a dance sequence as the lady’s six daughters come on-stage and perform for the disciple. This was followed by an advertisement for the performing group. The advertisements were followed by another dance performance, which lasted longer than the first. After around fifteen minutes of dancing, the play resumed. The play went on till 4am in the morning of the 10 February which was the last day of the Urus. This day had a repeat of the previous night’s theatrical performance which was followed by lunch. The Urus festival holds great importance in the village life of Maharashtra, more so than even Diwali and Holi. The celebrations become a matter of village pride and are therefore taken very seriously.

Chinmay