Narrative series
The Living Tradition
Anatomy of Odia culture — prehistoric roots, sacred geography, language, social architecture, food, craft, dance, festivals, and modernity's pressure.
Chapters
- 01 Chapter 1: Before the Temples In 1939, a young anthropologist named Nirmal Kumar Bose walked along the banks of the Burhabalang River in Mayurbhanj district, at the edge of what is now the Similipal Tiger Reserve, and picked up a stone. It was not a remarkable stone to the untrained eye -- palm-sized, made of 7,043 words
- 02 Chapter 2: The Sacred Geography In 1985, archaeologists from the Bhubaneswar Circle of the Archaeological Survey of India cracked open a stone casket inside a brick stupa on a hill called Lalitgiri, in Jajpur district. The casket was made of Khondalite stone, and inside it, like Chinese puzzle boxes, sat three 8,737 words
- 03 Chapter 3: The Tongue and Its Many Voices In the village of Jaugada, about thirty kilometres from modern-day Berhampur in southern Odisha, there is a rock. It is not a particularly dramatic rock --- not a cliff face or a cave wall, just a large outcrop of stone on a low hill overlooking the Rushikulya River. But carved i 9,108 words
- 04 Chapter 4: The Social Architecture In the village of Raghurajpur, seven kilometers north of Puri on the road that runs along the Bhargavi River, the lanes are organized with the precision of a circuit board. Walk in from the main road and you enter the Chitrakar Sahi --- the painters' neighborhood --- where every 9,634 words
- 05 Chapter 5: The Odia Table Through Time In 2003, a team of archaeologists led by Professor R.K. Mohanty of Deccan College began excavating a low mound on the north bank of the Malaguni River, a few kilometres from the shore of Chilika Lake in Khurda district. The site was called Golbai Sasan -- an unremarkable village 8,584 words
- 06 Chapter 6: Thread, Stone, Leaf In a dim concrete room in Kardola village, Bargarh district, a woman named Sushila Meher sits cross-legged on the floor, tying knots. Not decorative knots, not idle knots. Each one is a pixel. She is programming a saree. 6,787 words
- 07 Chapter 7: Body as Instrument In March 2015, a ninety-two-year-old woman named Sashimani Devi died in a small house near the Jagannath Temple in Puri. No national newspaper carried the news on its front page. No television channel interrupted its programming. The Prime Minister did not tweet. She was, by the 9,061 words
- 08 Chapter 8: The Festival Year On a Thursday morning in November, before the sun has cleared the trees, a woman in a village near Puri is awake. She has swept the mud floor of her house, sprinkled it with water mixed with cow dung, and is now on her knees with a small cloth bag of rice flour, drawing elaborate 7,708 words
- 09 Chapter 9: The Other Odisha In the summer of 2013, in twelve villages scattered across the Niyamgiri hills of Rayagada district, something happened that had never happened before in the history of Indian democracy. The Supreme Court of India had ruled, on April 18, that the Dongria Kondh -- a tribal communi 9,259 words
- 10 Chapter 10: The Great Unraveling On March 19, 2015, a ninety-two-year-old woman named Sasimani Devi died in a small house near the Jagannath Temple in Puri. She had been ill for some time, and her death was not unexpected. What was extraordinary about her passing was what it closed. Sasimani Devi was the last Ma 9,804 words
Source Research
The raw research that informs this series.