On my final weekend in Ujire I was invited by an auto rickshaw driver to attend a Yakshagana being played in his community. Yakshagana is a dance show performed by a travelling theatre troop, and this particular show had been organised as a celebration and thanks to God by the owners of a newly built house.
We arrived after dark to find a brightly lit stage and about 100 occupied plastic chairs in front of the stage. Apparently this play was a “social drama” and each scene was different – a comedy between a drunk and his wife, a soliloquy from a king, a haunted dream, sword fighting...
About 100 people from the local community had turned out to watch the show on the brightly lit outdoor stage.
The costumes were amazingly detailed, and the brilliant white, black and red make-up on the performers faces accentuated their expressions. Sitting on a raised platform behind the actors, the four strong band of two drummers, a singer and chimes played along.
The play lasts for over 6 hours, and continues to 4am.
Despite not understanding the dialogue, I found myself really enjoying the spectacle of the show, which had a bit of a pantomime feel to it due to the bright costumes, cross dressing (all the actors were male) and jokes thrown out to the audience.
During my last few days in Ujire I started to notice again some of the things which had become “normal” over the last few months – from our lunchtime banana leaf plate at "the hotel with no name" to the street vendors who materialize each evening to sell Chaats at the roadside. I never quite adjusted to the non-stop honking of horns on the roads, or being constantly stared at, however after three months as the only Westerner in Ujire, I felt like I was slowly settling in.
Riding "Hercules" through Ujire always attracted attention.
The Selco Rural Lab team!
The development and dissemination of small scale agri machinery is a slow process. I have seen how it will take time for farmers develop to the confidence to invest in new machinery, and the challenges in making this machinery easily accessible to the farmers who are willing to invest. However, in the last three months, I feel that we have made some progress. We have started to collect some orders for the threshing machine we tested back in October, and the transplanter has now been successfully rented out (and paid for!) by a local farmer. Hopefully these small steps will pave the way for further dissemination.
Uptake is a slow process, but farmers are starting to show serious interest in the threshing machine including ordering a machine for community rentals.
There are still challenges in use of the transplanter, particularly due to the variability of soil conditions and the used of large sticks as fertiliser which block the mechanism.
So, that's about it. Thank you for reading if you have reached this far! I'm not sure where all I have learnt about India, rice farming and chapati making will lead me, but the last few months have been eye opening and totally unforgettable. Finally, I’m very grateful to the amazing team at Selco who welcomed me to India and helped to make my time there such an incredible experience.
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