By SHYAMHARI CHAKRA
For the past six years, on the first day of February, the sleepy village of Badahata beside the Bhubaneswar-Puri highway goes agog with arrival of a large number of visitors from far and wide. On this day, friends and disciples of well-known Odissi music exponent Guru Ramahari Das gather in the village to celebrate his birthday with a three-day festival of music and dance aptly titled Gurukul Utsav.
“Our Guru renounced family life and built up this Ramahari Das Odishi Gurukul Trust as a huge family for artistes like me investing all his income and savings. So we decided to celebrate his birthday as the foundation day of the Gurukul that was set up eight years ago. His friends, most of whom are great artistes and who are trustees of the Gurukul as well, thought of this three-day annual arts festival as a befitting birthday bash,” informed young Odissi vocalist Himansu Sekhar Swain, who decided to live in the ancient gurukul tradition at the Gurukul after completion of his university education in Bhubaneswar.
The inaugural evening on Saturday would feature solo Odissi music recital by Anuja Tarini Mishra followed by Odissi dance by well-known danseuse Aruna Mohanty and Pallinrutya, the vanishing indigenous rural dance tradition of Odisha, by disciples of Odissi Guru Sanatan Nayak – all from Bhubaneswar.
The second evening on Sunday would commence with Veena recital by the students of host Gurukul who are being groomed by K Ramarao Patra, the only Veena exponent of Odisha. It would be followed by dance drama Bhakta Prahallad by Odissi Guru Gajendra Panda’s Tridhara dance troupe from Bhubaneswar. The dance drama has drawn elements of Odissi and Prahlad Natak, the famous indigenous folk arts tradition of Odisha.
The festival’s concluding evening on Monday would have solo Odissi recital Gitamanjari Behera from Bhubaneswar followed by instrumental ensemble led by Amit Kumar Das and Geetinatya (dance-drama) by the artistes of Jhankadshree Sanskrutika Anusthan, Nanpur from Cuttack district headed by Sukant Kumar Sahoo.
Each evening session – daily from 7 pm to 9 pm – would precede by one-hour presentation of the students of Gurukul. “A major mission of the Gurukul has been to discover, nurture and highlight rural talents and hence Gurukul founder Ramahari Das prefers to feature more artistes and troupes from rural areas in the festival,” shared mardal maestro Guru Dhaneswar Swain, an intimate friend and colleague of the Guru who is also founder-member of the Trust.
The Gurukul runs five departments on its sprawling campus – veena, flute, vocal music, mardal and Odissi dance.
