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The landscape certainly
does not inspire. As it stretches for miles and countless miles all around, it is
apparent that the one thing the desert does not have is colour. The sands drift a
bleached blond, and the scrub cover is straggly, and when there are flowers, they are a
dull shade of white or yellow, with the exception of the flame of the forest that blooms
hidden in the forests of the Aravallis.
Yet, the Thar, and with it
all of Rajasthan, is known as the most colourful desert in the world. Festivals and
celebrations, music and dance punctuate its barrenness, turning the land into a fertile
basin of colour and creativity.
When is it that inspired
these people to live their life with such verve and passion? Was it an attempt to
overcome the harshness of the desert conditions that led them to celebrate in such
overwhelming style? Did the fact that life itself was unpredictable lend and edge of
gaiety to the manner in which they lived? Or was it all of these?
In Rajasthan these are
mere questions, for only colour is a reality, as is the zest with which the people make
their journey through life. If festivals are a source for lavish enjoyment, so are
marriages. Pageantry is a part of the daily ritual manifest in the way the men and women
dress, resplendent in their raiments where the colours never seem to cease. Silver and
gold glint at elbow and ankle, jewels twinkles at nose and neck; veils and turbans use
bold, passionate colours to liven up the landscape; there is a sense of both
fllamboyance and coquetry. Men, lesss ritually adorned than women, can vie with their
women on the amount of jewellery they sport.
Each region in Rajasthan
has its own form of folk entertainment, the tribals contributing no little measure to
it. In most parts, entertainment is provided by professional communities of entertainers
whose livelihood depends on it, and who have evolved their respective arts into fine
forms. Certainly the patronage of the royal families helped to support the entertainers,
but there was also the Rajasthani ideal of the person who was equally appreciative of
the arts as of swordsmanship. According to a popular couplet, only a man sensitive to
music, landscape, appearance, wine, poetry and painting was worthy being called a true
aristocrat. (Rag, baag, poshak, madh, kavita austasvir, Jo yaanki parakh kare beene kahe
amir.)
Celebrations in Rajasthan
range form the religious to the popular, linked with commerce, as in the case of the
camel and cattle fairs. In more recent years, the tourism department too has initiated a
number of tourist fairs in an attempt to showcase the performing arts of a region.
Amazingly, though the soil throbs with the sounds of celebration, its vibrant chords
require little sophistry apart from the simple, unsophisticated instruments that include
the ravanhatha (a stringed instrument), the morchang (a Jewish harp), the bankia
(trumpet), algoza (twin flutes), the duff (tambourine), and the amazingly innocuous
matka (earthen pitcher) which is flipped over to play the most amazingly mesmeric beat
that resounds with the pulse of Rajasthan.
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