Tableau depicting plight of flood victims lends sobriety to spectacle
Mysuru: Culture can never entirely insulate itself from the physical world, its splendour or brutality. Frames of friezes that motored along the thoroughfares of Mysuru’s Central Business District (CBD) on Tuesday as part of the Vijayadashami procession, served to remind one of this truism. While the sheer scale of the Naada Habba celebrations in the Heritage City held the audience spellbound, tableaux from North Karnataka depicting the travails of the people in that region in the aftermath of the flood, forced the viewing public to spend a couple of moments over their plight.
The sequence of tableaux that brought the suffering of the flood victims disturbingly to life added a slice of solemnity to the proceedings.
The eyes of the spectators lingered over the tableau that depicted the plight of Belagavi, which bore the brunt of nature’s fury this year, for a few poignant moments. In all, 38 tableaux rolled along the streets of Mysuru. A tableau that brought to life the distress of Bagalkot elicited a similar reaction from the public. Pattadakal and Basavakalyana, both places of great historical import, were among the places that were submerged in the deluge, and the district’s tableau sought to remind the whole state of the problems that excess rain plunged the region in. Meanwhile, the tableau of Kodagu district, besides sorrowfully vivifying the flood in the birthplace of the River Cauvery, stressed the need for afforestation to keep natural calamities at bay.
The eyes of the spectators lingered over the tableau that depicted the plight of Belagavi, which bore the brunt of nature’s fury this year, for a few poignant moments. In all, 38 tableaux rolled along the streets of Mysuru. A tableau that brought to life the distress of Bagalkot elicited a similar reaction from the public. Pattadakal and Basavakalyana, both places of great historical import, were among the places that were submerged in the deluge, and the district’s tableau sought to remind the whole state of the problems that excess rain plunged the region in. Meanwhile, the tableau of Kodagu district, besides sorrowfully vivifying the flood in the birthplace of the River Cauvery, stressed the need for afforestation to keep natural calamities at bay.
Interestingly, the selfless service of the Ambiga community in the rescue operations in Yadgir district was also depicted in a tableau.
Central programmes featured
As has been the case for the past few years, the procession also saw tableaux featuring initiatives and programmes of the central government. The tableau from Gadag district featured the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ initiative, while the Chandrayaan Two of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) was Bengaluru’s contribution to the procession. There were also tableaux that detailed India’s strikes against terrorist camps in Pakistan and the Centre’s ‘Fit India’ campaign.
Notwithstanding mounting opposition to the project, the tableau of the Mysuru district administration featured the benefits of the Yettinahole project, which seeks to divert water from the Nethravati River to fill ponds and lakes in the parched Chikkaballapur, Kolar and surrounding districts.
The visage of Shivakumara Swami, the late seer of the Siddaganga Mutt, who passed away in January, was the primary attraction of Tumakuru’s tableau. Mysuru district’s tableau commemorated the centenary of Jayachamaraja Wadiyar, the last king of the erstwhile Mysore state.
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