Cultural performances, art exhibition, interactive sessions and a Mahabharatthemed food festival will be part of the event.
After capturing the imagination of TV and filmmakers, the Ma habharat is coming to Lucknow, thanks to a first-of-its-kind festival on the epic. Scheduled for October 2 and 3, the event is being organised by UP Tourism in association with the Draupadi Trust, and will showcase the Mahabharat era and also give people a peek into the characters of the epic through exhibitions, interactive sessions, quiz, cultural programmes and also a food festival!
Why a Mahabharat festival
“Our plan is to highlight and bring people’s attention to this place called Kampil in UP , which was a prominent place in the tale of Mahabharat. But despite the epic being so well-known in the state, places like Kampil are yet to be explored for tourism. We want to attract tourists to destinations like these and also educate our own people about our rich heritage,” says Amrit Abhijat, DG UP Tourism. “We expect a lot of school kids, college students and people who must know about the relevance of the Mahabharat, to be there,” he adds.
Neera Misra, who has collaborated with the government on the initiative, says there is still a lot to be done, but that they will make sure that people love this festival. “It comes as a surprise to most people that the maximum characters of the Mahabharat were from places that come under the present day Uttar Pradesh. Panchali, or Draupadi was born in Kampil, which is near Farukkhabad. There are still remnants of the palace that used to be there during that time, which was discovered a few years ago. Then there’s Mathura, the Krishna Janmbhumi, Hastinapur, Kashi where Amba, Ambe and Ambalika belonged to, Naimisharanya, where Mahabharat was narrated to the rishis and Allahabad which was then the Kaushambi region. South Panchal used to be where you have present day Kampil, near Farrukhabad, and North Panchal was where we have present day Bareilly , Amla and other places. So the purpose of having this festival is to let people know about all these places and to inform tourists across the world that UP has a big part to play in the history of the world and to mark these places on the tourist map,” adds Misra.
What’s in store
The festival as it is planned, will have an exhibition of paintings made on the Mahabharat through centuries. “For art lovers this will be a visual treat as we have planned an exhibition of the timeline of the Mahabharat through art. We have found references of the epic in Mohenjodaro where a plaque was discovered of Krishna and Balram picking up a tree.Then there’s also a book on Mahabharat written by Persian artists commissioned by Mughal Emperor Akbar. We will be putting up paintings from that book and also paintings by Raja Ravi Verma made on the epic,” shares Neera Misra. There will also be manuscripts which talk about the Mahabharata. “Students of the Government College of Arts and Crafts and the Dr.Shakuntala Misra National Rehabilitation University will be making other paintings based on their interpretations of the epic and its characters. We will also have the war strategies or the Vyuhas like the Matsya Vyuha, Chandra Vyuha, and the Ardh Chandra Vyuha, depicted through sketches for people to understand what advanced level of planning went into fighting the war,” informs Neera.
Apart from interactive sessions with guests and school children, there will also be a small section on Draupadi as the empowered woman with a pictorial depiction of key episodes in her life and how she took the decisions which changed the history of the world. The scene of Draupadi’s swayamvar with Arjun piercing the fish eye will be depicted through live models dressed as courtiers and a life-size model of Arjun.
The evenings, meanwhile, will be reserved for cultural programmes. “These too will be centred around the theme, with Teejan Bai, the famous Pandvani, performing at the festival and also a dance ballet by renowned dancer Sharon Lowen,” informs Amrit Abhijat.
For more involvement of the people from the city, a play based on students interpretation of the characters of the epic is also being prepared by the students of Bhatkhande Music University .
“With the purpose of having something for everyone a food festival is also being planned based on the theme with dishes we can only imagine were eaten by people of that era,” says Abhijat. “The food festival will also focus on the food typical to that area. So from Varanasi or Kashi we will have chiwda, aloo papad and Bheem laddoo. From Mathura we will have fresh makkhan and peda. The Panchal region will have a Panchal thaal serving five dishes and from Hastinapur the Vidur Ki Thali with daalbaati and chokha,” informs Neera.
The handicrafts of these regions will also be displayed at the festival with brocade and zardozi and wooden toys from Varanasi, block printed cloth and zardozi and also Draupadi ka lehenga from Kampil, Gangajal and Geeta Saar from Naimishranya and Allahabad and Banaras. We have also called artisans from these places to put up their stuff too,” says Neera.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / by Itishree Misra, TNN / September 05th, 2015