Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Culture A festival of significance

But this festival was one with a difference. Come to think of it, it would be pertinent to call it a movement rather than a festival...a movement which is on the rise. Aptly named the “Patha Vithinanam Panduga” (the Old Seeds Festival), it’s a display of traditionally and organically grown seeds by the villagers as a way of reinforcing the belief that ‘a few small seeds can feed a family, a fistful of seeds the whole community’. It has all the reverence that a religious festival entails but with a difference. Here, they pay obeisance to Mother Earth’s bounties and show how they transpire their devotion into maintaining the virginity of the land.

“The whole thing has a spiritual connotation to it. And it’s about preserving the biodiversity and food security in the tribal area”, mentions Jaya Hattangadi who associates passionately with the tribals and their culture. “It’s a seasonal festival which also displays a sense of agricultural might of each village. The crux of the festival is the maturity of the seeds they bring, the traditional methods of storing them and the growth processes which are untouched by modern techniques”, Jaya continues.

The farmers dwelling in the hilly terrains of Araku and neighbouring villagers come down to the valley to the accompaniment of tribal percussion instruments and gather in the respective enclosures assigned to each village. The Yejjodu (the priest) of the host village starts the proceedings after paying respect to the village deity. Now the seeds are ready for display. As people wait with baited breath, a jury of about five Headmen inspects the quality, quantity, variety and the array of seeds. The winner is announced based on the maximum count of varieties each village has grown.

A very unique ritual follows after the produce is displayed. The Yejjodu picks out samples from the array of seeds and symbolically scatters them over his head which are promptly collected by the ladies in their sari pallav. These then are mixed in their own crop of seeds, giving to the belief that this would bring in a better yield of crops as they sow them the next season.

Organised by Sanjeevini, a Community Based Organisation (CBO), this is the third year running that the festival is being held. This year the venue was Karakavalsa village in the Sovva valley, around 20 km from the Araku station.

A strength of around 40 villages trudged the hard terrains of the hills to ensure that the endeavour by Sanjivini and supported by Samata, an NGO to bring unadulterated, organic food stuff back into the main stream is a success. This year the winning team came from Semiliguda in Orissa under the aegis of WIDA, an NGO who brought with them about 105 different varieties of cereal, pulses and vegetable and flower seeds.

This festival is of great significance to the modern world which is plagued by the ills of agri-terrorism and chemically poisoned food consumed by us.

The health consciousness that has come up in the western world as a result of scientific recognition in the wealth of organically grown food and the need to consume natural food, has created a movement towards converting genetically modified, high yielding varieties of crop lands into natural farms.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail