17/03/2025
The other day, I had walked down to spruce up the cottages and Common Rooms at Infinite Souls Farm, in preparation for One Year Lease Theatre Company and the Lysistrata brigade when I noticed the Bhoomi Jathre posters as if for the first time. Perhaps I had community on my mind but they brought back a flood of memories; of togetherness, shared purpose, conviction and that beautiful ficus tree at Fireflies. I'm writing this to honour all those involved - the organizers, the artists and the audience. Also, because Paul Gonzalves is nore more with us.
Perhaps we had just gone to visit Siddhartha at Fireflies Ashram with my dear father-in-law, Pattabhi? I can’t recall. I remember the sun was setting, it was beautiful, we shared a drink. And then the Bhoomi Jathre freight train began moving! The ideas flowed fast and fruious. Arvind and Paul Gonzalves were living at Fireflies those days and Arvind painted the first ever Bhoomi Jathre poster. We were Lalitha Kamath, George Kurien, Konarak and myself, besides the Fireflies crew that included Arvind, Paul, Siddhartha, Sudha Reddy and Deepa, who was a little girl, then. We called ourselves Artists’ Action Group (AAG). The thought behind the festival was that artists shouldn’t have to beg for support and sponsorship, we were capable of creating/performing as autonomous spirits. Siddhartha offered us Fireflies and oh, that tree so beckoned us. We spoke with our friends, fellow artists who willingly came on board, and made a program. We couldn’t offer them anything but a promise. We were proudly NON-SPONSORED. The ticket would be Rs 200 for a whole night of music, dance and theatre. Dusk to Dawn, starlit, was our offering to the audience. It was 2003, way before the corporate rock shows took over the festival space, we had no idea if anyone would come all the way to Kaggalipura village.
We announced stalls for organic and home made foods - absolutely no plastic, no brands, no Coke. The offers were many! Sudha was already working with women from Kaggalipura so she mobilized them to run stalls with akki roti, chutney, homemade nipattu and kodbale, tender coconut water. Friends came up with ideas for stalls selling farm-fresh salads, momos, brownies, biriyani. The Fireflies crew pulled out all the stops and decorated the space so beautifully with coconut thatch, marigolds. The thatch stalls were built and ready. Like I said, it was a super creative space and ideas were a dime a dozen! Let’s serve coffee and idlis at dawn, said Konarak, let’s have a sunrise meditation. Siddhartha brought on board artists such as Dalit singer Banandur Kempaiah and musicians from the North-East like David Chungandro Teran. (Younger theatre artists may remember that Banandur Kempaiah's story was visibilised recently, in Jangama Collective's Panchama Pada.) We invited in everyone we loved to listen to or watch - Debi Prasad Ghosh (sarod), Tripura Kashyap (dance), Shanthi Rao (Veena), Thermal and a Quarter and so many, many more. Mysore Brothers Manjunath will recall performing there!
The financial plan involved a 40-60 division. 40% would go to the organisers and 60% divided among artists. We all shared the risk. If no one showed up, we would be glad to perform to the Banyan tree and each other. We didn’t have the stress of “visibility and reach”. No logos, no banners. Fireflies organised parking in a neighbour’s field. The citizens of Kaggalipura were actively involved. We started spreading the word. No cell phones and no social media, so we wrote letters to everyone we knew, so we were reaching various communities in the city - artists, activists, educators, friends, friends of friends, radicals and revolutionaries of the heart. The promise was that it would be a people’s arts festivals supported by artists and audiences, no other agendas, no event managers, no corporate presence. The stalls would be run by human beings who were offering food either grown by them or cooked by them, there would be no brands. There were film screenings, free book stalls and different environmental themes that Siddhartha suggested every year. The atmosphere was one of shared spirit. A friend who worked in advertising was miffed by the NON-SPONSORED tag. He couldn’t understand why we would state that on a poster. But we, smiling to ourselves, knew exactly why.
Well, the day of the first Bhoomi Jathre arrived. Fireflies looked resplendent, the banyan tree, a mother, drawing us to her lap. The long and the short of it is that 800 people showed up that first year. They broughts mats, sleeping bags, food to share, water, flowers. The next year, the audience had grown to 2000 and by year 3, it was 3000 and growing. The artists were doing very well, indeed! Bhoomi Jathre was becoming a festival to reckon with.
But..and there is always a ‘but’ in something beautiful, isn’t there? Perhaps it had to do with our lack of subtlety, a sensitivity to the birds in the trees. Perhaps it had to do with an as yet naive understanding of the politics of arts support. By the latter, I mean that only when artists feel the burning need to still create without corporate support, will an event like Bhoomi Jathre be birthed. This doesn't mean that one shouldn't make work that is supported, oh not at all. Rather, something like Bhoomi Jathre underlines the artist's ability to still create when unsupported. To keep going when what you offer is disregarded or belittled. To sense the dignity in self-sufficiency. To value the idea behind a non-sponsored arts festival. If artists don’t feel that, then they will, like water, find another model that will suit their needs and find their own way. But the gestation and birthing of something like a Bhoomi Jathre has to be organic. It cannot be forced. So for the moment, Bhoomi Jathre as we knew it, came to an end and was followed by another beautiful event - The Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music.
Today, as I look back on the people and the circumstances, I know that Bhoomi Jathre, for the 3 years it ran, was nothing short of a miracle. The generosity of Fireflies, the vision of the artists who came to organise and perform, the solidarities forged by those non-transactional acts of setting up stalls, cooking, sharing, bringing free wares, buying a festival ticket with such a strong feeling for eco-justice, art and community.
I hear echoes of Bhoomi Jathre in Visthar’s Bhoomi Habba, in it's spirit, idealogy and politics. In Gopal Navale's constant endeavours from the 80's onwards, keeping music with the people. But a festival that was organised by artists for artists and supported by ONLY people-power where artists actually earned money?? Gosh, I wish we had had the foresight to make a documentary like those Woodstock people did. It would have been so enriching and meaningful to our understanding of support for the arts and community.
