Lost Media
We live in exciting times. Times of rapid changes. Things are moving faster than ever. Every fortnight some new technology enters the market. There was the cassette era then the CD era came in and now it’s the iPod generation. Television rocked the world and nothing has been the same ever since. The times are exciting and living in such times is nothing less than fun.
However there are people who’ve paid a price for the development and the technological advancements we’ve made. The iPods of the world are made for the consumption of a certain category of people. Not all have benefited from the development route that we’ve taken.I’m citing the example of the Patuas of Bengal. The Patua’s are story tellers. They tell their stories through their paintings. They paint on cloth scrolls, which in a sequence unveil a story. The Patua expects to sit with his audience while he sings and narrates stories, which have a moral lesson for his audience. The stories would talk about worship of gods and goddess or tales from well known epics. Stories of how a person who did not worship a goddess was punished. The Patua would go to a fair or a market place or to a cluster of houses and perform. Year after year he narrated the same stories that the audience already knew, with the same scrolls and the audience enjoyed it. It was a form of entertainment for people and a means or livelihood for the Patua.The patua’s were entertainers and not just painters. The scrolls that they made were passed down from generation to generation and the same story would be retold. Now this folk form of entertainment has lost out to the new forms like the Cinema and Televison. The Patua has no audience for his performance. You would now find the Patua sitting in an exhibition with scrolls after scrolls of his narrative paintings. He is not a performer anymore but a mere painter. His paintings are displayed and are bought by elite clientele. The stories that he tells are also different, he now incorporates contemporary events, often sensational and related to disasters and scandals. The stories still have a moral end to it, somehow he relates these incidences to our old notions about right and wrong about justice and injustice about honesty and dishonesty etc.
However there are people who’ve paid a price for the development and the technological advancements we’ve made. The iPods of the world are made for the consumption of a certain category of people. Not all have benefited from the development route that we’ve taken.I’m citing the example of the Patuas of Bengal. The Patua’s are story tellers. They tell their stories through their paintings. They paint on cloth scrolls, which in a sequence unveil a story. The Patua expects to sit with his audience while he sings and narrates stories, which have a moral lesson for his audience. The stories would talk about worship of gods and goddess or tales from well known epics. Stories of how a person who did not worship a goddess was punished. The Patua would go to a fair or a market place or to a cluster of houses and perform. Year after year he narrated the same stories that the audience already knew, with the same scrolls and the audience enjoyed it. It was a form of entertainment for people and a means or livelihood for the Patua.The patua’s were entertainers and not just painters. The scrolls that they made were passed down from generation to generation and the same story would be retold. Now this folk form of entertainment has lost out to the new forms like the Cinema and Televison. The Patua has no audience for his performance. You would now find the Patua sitting in an exhibition with scrolls after scrolls of his narrative paintings. He is not a performer anymore but a mere painter. His paintings are displayed and are bought by elite clientele. The stories that he tells are also different, he now incorporates contemporary events, often sensational and related to disasters and scandals. The stories still have a moral end to it, somehow he relates these incidences to our old notions about right and wrong about justice and injustice about honesty and dishonesty etc.
‘Traditional Hand Painting In Vegeteble Colour’ this is a signboard under which three Patua’s are sitting displaying their scrolls in a Crafts Museum in Delhi. This sign says a lot about the Patuas encounter with the modern. Firstly the fact that the sign is in English tells us the audience that it is talking to. Secondly the mention of the fact that it is ‘traditional’ meaning that it is a work which has a significance in the past and has a historical lineage, characteristics for which nowadays there is a lot of demand. Ethnic and Traditional are words that attract a large number of audiences. However it would be important to note that the paintings are not really in Vegetable colours. In the past, more than fifty years back perhaps the Patua painted with colours extracted from vegetables and flowers but that’s not the case anymore. The word ‘vegetable’ is wrongly spelt suggesting the limited affiliation that this group has with the language or the audience it is talking to. Thirdly the fact that this sign advertising the product exists is the most significant messages of all. All old forms of art, expression, entertainment are undergoing a transformation. There is a constant struggle for survival and in this struggle the art forms themselves loose their true essence. The changes that we see around us are inevitable however we need to be conscious and sensitive towards the effects that these changes has on the society.
Kasturi
Kasturi
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