Purulia- Rural Village and Home of Chou dancing

I returned on Tuesday afternoon from a trip to Purulia, and am already headed off again traveling. This time we are headed to Bhodgaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment. We will be staying at the international Meditation Centre in Bihar, and I am ready for some beauty and relaxation.

Our trip to Purulia
We were accompanied by Professor Arnaub Ray (one of my personal
favorites, he is a bit nerdy, a linguist if you please)and
one of the actors who had been rehearsing the Greek tragedy on our
rooftop. After a fitful night's sleep on the barren train (no a/c, no
pillows, no blankets, no food...) we arrived early in the morning at
the surprisingly nice hotel, had breakfast, and hit the road for a
long car trip to the rural village where they make the elaborate
masks for Chou dancing. Getting to that village was relatively
anti-climactic (partially because I wasn't so interested in the masks,
nor was there much to see, though I did have a good time tickling and
chasing some of the local kids around...), but mostly because the drive
was sooo beautiful!

The rice paddies are gorgeous, there are cows and oxen and dogs and
sheep and goats all over the place, and the people are majestically picturesque.! En route we suffered several car problems (a rod fell
out of our tire, the boy's car overheated a few times, we'd have to
stop on a winding mountain road to allow trucks overburdened with
people and goods to pass...), but the breaks were great because we got
the chance to walk around, take pictures and write in our journals (I
know, nerdy). One particularly good stop was in a small village where
I got out of the car, hung out with some young rural boys, and ate
sugar cane under an enormous tamarind tree. At this stop we heard news
that the boys' car had fallen behind, and were warned of a "Mad
Elephant" on the loose....

We had two lectures (both in our hotel rooms), one was about Chou
dancing, and the other was about Jhumur, a type of beautiful classical
singing accompanied (and in my opinion OVERSHADOWED) by
out-of-this-world drumming. The highlight of the trip was the Chou
dance performance: the entire village crowded around a small cleared
area (the young children sat directly behind us vying for our
attention, the adolescent boys stood behind them staring at us, and
the rest of the village sat all around focusing on the show). The
drums are incredible! And the dance is amazing too, full of
outrageously elaborate costumes and masks, with crazy martial arts and
acrobatic stunts. Then our professor and the actor guy ( a local hero
in that village for some reason...) bought two bottles of this local
liquor, honestly similar to bathtub gin, made of flowers that
elephants occasionally get drunk from eating.

We went back to the hotel, had dinner, then lounged around with our
professor smoking cigarettes from Bangladesh and drinking this terrible alcohol. We
had to get up at 4am to catch our train, didn't get back to Calcutta
until noon, showered and had lunch, then had to go to our class at
Loreto College....Less than ideal circumstances, but well worth the journey :-)