RAGHURAJPUR: A Monday morning had never been so calm and quiet in Odisha’s heritage village, Raghurajpur, as it was on May 6.The familiar sounds of the sculptors’ chisel chipping the stones, the tapping of feet by Gotipua dancers, the humming of Pattachitra artists at work and the wows and giggles of the tourists were missing in air.
A melodious pleading to Lord Jagannath–“Manimahe etike maguni moro, marana kalare darshana deba kala mukha kalakara (My lord, I just have one wish. While facing death, I want to catch a glimpse of you, the dark-skinned artiste) broke the silence. It was the voice of a 13-year-old Jyotirmayee Nayak, rehearsing a Odissi song for an award function in Bhubaneswar on May 12.
But, the uprooted trees, broken houses, tangled cables, rain-soaked pattachitras and broken stone sculptures lying all over the village left her worried and helpless as the members of at least 140 families in her village.
Cyclone Fani has turned the lives of the artists of Raghurajpur and Basudevpur upside down. The ferocity of the storm has inflicted heavy damage on their art and craft. Artist Pratima Maharana, who paints ‘Jatra Pattis’ in her village alone, has lost most of her paintings depicting all rituals of Jagannath Temple. Only five out of 50 ‘pattis’ are left with her. Other artistes like Sachikanta Sahoo and Banamali Mohapatra have apparently lost paintings worth one to two lakh rupees.
“The cyclone tore through our workshops. The tin sheets covering roofs of our houses were blown away. There was no community centre, where we could take shelter nor had the Government constructed a temporary shelter. As the cyclone was breaking my stone sculptures and the artistically carved wooden ceiling of my 200-year-old house, I stood helpless,” said Trilochan Das, a stone sculptor. The villagers, who lived in kutcha houses, had nothing to armour themselves from nature’s fury, except for the pillars.
In the adjacent village of Basudebpur, the coir artistes were a worried lot. As hundreds of coconut trees were uprooted by the cyclone, they apprehended shortage of fibre for the craft. The craftsmen usually travel eight km by bicycles to Sakhigopal for buying coconut fibre at `40 per Kg. “The cost of the fibre will go up in a few days as it takes long to grow coconut trees,” said Mamata Rawl, a coir artisan.
The villagers, who claimed to have not received any assistance or relief from the State Government so far, were struggling hard to clear the debris of the village on their own. Meanwhile, they were also apprehensive that the cyclone would affect their livelihood. “We used to get natural colours and other painting-related materials from Puri. Now, that it is devastated and would need months to recover, we will face problems in procuring raw materials for our artwork,” said Bahdeb Das of Raghurajpur, whose paintings as large as 10x5 feet have been completely damaged.
With infrastructure poised to take months to be rebuilt or restored, the villagers were apprehensive about the inflow of tourists or arrival of middlemen to the village. As they claimed, around 200 to 300 customers used to visit the village before Fani daily. The village, which is often touted as a digital village with most artists carrying out cashless transactions, has no electricity or network connectivity now. Around 15 to 20 stone carvers in the village have also lost their art works in sandstones and serpentine stones, worth lakhs.