Birdwatching at Manglajodi

There are quite a number of good birdwatching areas in India and a very good site for water birds in Eastern India is the Manglajodi site. This is one of the back-waters of the Chilka Lake and is located near the town of Bhubaneshwar in Odisha. Thus it is about six hours train journey from Kolkata and about an hour's journey by vehicle to reach there. It can well be combined with a visit to the temple city of Pur, which is not far away, and the archaeological sites near Bhunabeshwar. It was once a well-known site for poaching of birds but thanks to efforts of Shri Nanda Kishore Bhujbal, a local enthusiast, the poachers were persuaded to become conservationists and thus the Shri Bhagwan Mahavir Pakshi Raskha Samity was formed in 2010. Since then the birds have been provided with strict protection and many of the local men have become boatmen and guides. They have come to acquire excellent knowledge of the habits of birds and the habitat and can make a good living with the stream of bird-watchers and tourists coming to the location.

Thesew few pictures will convey the sense of the nature of the habitat of Manglajodi and the rich birdlife that it offers.

"Patachitra" of Odisha

 "Patachitra" is a folk art form of Odisha, practised mainly in villages near and around the temple city of Puri. A prime centre is the village of Raghurajpur that is about 20 kms from Puri on the way to Bhubaneswar and it can be easily approached from Puri by bus or vehicle or even train. 

The word "patachitra" is derived from "pata" or plate or canvas, and was traditionally painted with oil-based colours on thin boards of wood, or on palmyra leaves, or on cloth. Patachitra as a folk art form seems to have started about a couple of centuries ago and has for motifs mainly themes based on Lord Jagannatha and Lord Krishna. Earlier it was done with a stylus on palm leaf but progressive it has come to be done with oil paints, mainly with  primary colours  of yellow, blue, red, green, with outlines finely etched with black, on cloth or wood. 

 

This picture is of a patachitra item collected from Raghurajpur, sometime in 1990-91. It was done the famous patachitra artist, Jagannath Panigrahi, a national award-winner at that time. 

Konarak Sun Temple in Odisha

Konarak, or more correctly, "Konark", or the Place of the Sun, in Odisha was one of the first places of historical interest  that I visited over the last fifty years or so.It was way back in 1967. There are three sun temples in India, these being Konarak near the temple town of Puri in Odisha, at Modhera in Gujarat and at Martand in Kashmir. The great Sun Temple at Konarak fascinated me not only for its great size but, equally, for the intricacy of its carvings. The marvelous sculpted wheels of the "Chariot of the Sun", as the temple resembles, are masterpieces, as are the finely carved figures of dancers.

But for an inveterate nature lover such as myself, it was the wondrous frieze of elephants right at the bottom of the structure that completely fascinated me. For possibly one hundred metres this frieze runs around the base of the Konarak temple, each metre depicting elephants in different poses and postures, in the most natural way that told of the long association of the sculptors with the elephants and their ways. It is not only great art, but a study in natural history.