INITIATION OF THE BAMBOO PAPER MAKING WORKSHOP IN PEARSON PALLI,SANTINKETAN

Images of Pearson Palli Village,Santiniketan

Pearson Palli,Santiniketan

After completion of the 1st phase of bamboo leaf paper making workshop in Fuldanga, the plan was to start a process of workshop based interaction in Pearson palli another santal village but which is literally more inside the Visva Bharati University campus and so called Santiniketan zone as demarcated by the heritage outer circle. In fact Pearson Palli named after Willie Pearson a social activist and teacher who participated with Tagore in the twenties in his work of rural development in Santiniketan, reflects Tagore’s attempt to form an educational system which will have a close access to the simple life of Santals and its evolution.

But the work in Pearson Palli took us sometime to start because of the state election that was underway during the early part of May. 

It will be interesting to note that even these small santal villages are not outside the political turmoil that is existent at the moment in Bengal. Although they are not part of the Jungle Mahal,the so called backward section of the Bengal Civic society who has received very less infrastructure in the name of development, these villages around Santiniketan are not also in a better situation. Although it is true that being close to Visva Bharati many of them are employed in the university and many of the young Santals are now educated in the university and are independently thinking about their own development, the basic infrastructure in these villages remain the same with very low electrical power, lack of proper drinking water and most importantly no planning for drainage system. Traditionally a Santal house would have their own private arrangements for drainage of waste waters which will be collected in a section of the house inside the individual boundary and which will later become space for feeding the goose and boars. But with the introduction of the concrete houses the waste water is no more collected inside the house but like any other city houses is projected outside to be drained. But since there is no planning for drainage the water gets accumulated on the road side. So a santal village which earlier used to be clean from both outside and inside presently is in a state of chaos and confusion both environmentally and socially.

 Pearson Palli is one such village which has been very regularly introduced to the influences of urban culture and is in a state of transition both socially, culturally and politically. The present political state has also affected the cultural life of the village and we had to wait for the election to end just to make things little relaxed for a bamboo paper making workshop and later to be followed by a joint exploration of the transforming cultural memories of the village in relation to its environment and the social life.

Workshop activity in Pearson Palli,Santal village ,Santiniketan



Old abondoned  Mud Hut was provided by the villagers of Pearson for the preparation of the Workshop site

Once the election was over, I together with Borhan Hansda who is again one of the collaborators of the project Aakil Aarsi sat for a meeting with the men in Pearson Palli. Initially there were concerns about the output of the workshop, but we could convince that working together on this workshop will generate possibilities for future. I also communicated my intentions of research and they whole heartedly agreed to provide me support for the workshop.

The abandoned , broken club house inside the village was selected for the workshop site, which meant we had to repair and transform the small mud house into a proper site for Bamboo paper making workshop with required infrastructure and tools.

Visva Bharati University wall just opposite to the workshop site