Fair in Kashipur: Memories and Change

Every Navratras, between last week of March and initial weeks of April, Kashipur hosts an annual fair by the name ‘Chaiti Mela’. The focus here is on two temples: one belonging to Lord Shiva and the other, of Goddess Shakti. Aurangzeb apparently repaired the Shakti temple and it does have a mosque like appearance from outside. Recent attempts have tried to correct the same. According to the myth, Bheema built the Shiva temple.

The fair held a grand importance in my imagination when I was child. Kashipur was a quaint sleepy town. The fair would fill it with a lot of buzz and activity. Rides, magicians, toy-sellers, food stalls, ice-cream parlors, animal markets and a big grand Circus. With the start of Navratri, the fair area would bustle with activity. Neighborhood kids would make their first trips and come back with hordes of shiny new plastic toys. This would fuel much jealousy and hatred. We would start our dharnas and this would soon escalate into fast-until-mela-visit threats. Parents would hold negotiations and end them with assurances that our grievances will be timely addressed.

The fair had large crowds, as people from distant parts of western UP descend upon it. Two days are especially important: the seventh and the eighth day of Navratri. Massive crowds would turn the fair grounds into a battlefield, as devotees got impatient. Policemen would be stretched to their limits managing crowds and the oily food (generally given to them for free). And this, specifically, was the day; parents would take us there.

Jostling for space with umpteen carts, cows, horses, holy men, donkeys, dogs, men, monkeys, stalls and street performers, we would slowly head towards the temple. The experience had been unintentionally designed to remind us about the sufferings of life, the slow and painful journey towards ultimate liberation. The ultimate darshan would last few fleeting seconds. Even these, were spent in choicest of abuses to whoever was trying to push or cut you out of the line. The goddess was generally happy to receive few words of prayer in between. The priest had a SOP for each pilgrim, which lasted exact 25-30 seconds. I never figured out or understood the mantra he uttered and always suspected that he was just moving lips.

The post darshan session was dedicated to exploring the fair area. Numerous shopkeepers and artisans would put up their wares. Traditional clothes, dresses, musical instruments, carpets, utensils, earthenware, agricultural tools along with cheap electronics, toys and some once in a year purchase items. The fair would generally see huge crowds from nearby villages and they were ready customers for anything new, fancy and interesting.

Then there were some key attractions. One was, what I would call, pseudo-wonder center. This consisted of things like ‘shortest lady alive’, ‘tallest man alive’, ‘baby with snake body’, ‘baby with three heads’, ‘snake with 5 heads’ etc. Most of them were tricks designed to fool people looking at them from a good 15-20 feet. Then there was the ‘Well of Death’. A big cylindrical structure inside which cars would speed up until they had enough centrifugal force to climb the walls and defy gravity. People would stand on the edge of the well. The driver, confident of the speed, would get up on his seat and then put his body out of the window, sometimes touching the hands of the people standing on the edge. This would draw awe from the crowd. Both of these were pricey and we went there just once.

There was an annual circus, with a 3-hr long performance with lions, tigers, camels, elephants and bears doing different stunts. They would play cricket, football, jump the rings, hold people’s head between their teeth, put garlands on random people etc. The show would start with Bharat Mata riding an elephant. Thereafter the trapeze artists would take over. They would leave people astounded with their leaps and catches. There was also the usual fare of jokers, magic tricks, blindfolded stunts, knife throwing, juggling, flame throwing and contraptions like a flying motorcycle.

Right next to circus was a temporary zoo. Sad and lone animals silently awaiting their deaths, sitting in disgusting cages littered with food, feces, filth and plastic wrappers thrown in by people. I suspected that some of them were animals from the circus. I remember seeing wolf, lion, tiger, leopard, bear, crocodile, zebra and foxes.  The zoo was a sad place. Right next to zoo was a temporary animal market. People would exchange camels, horses and other domestic animals. Sometime, pigeons, parakeets and doves were also sold in cages.

There were rides (a swinging boat) and a giant Ferris wheel. It was large enough that you could see for some distance around. Once we had done the entire round, we headed back home. Ice creams and snacks were demanded and provided. The beseeching for toys and plastic guns were not heeded. I once smuggled a plastic gun to school and hit the teacher in the eye with its pellet. Plastic guns were a strict no-no after that. We did not have a camera those days and so no pictures survive. But those were interesting days.

I visited the fair again this year. As expected the time has taken its toll.  The zoo was closed long back because of the animal abuse. The circus had its main attractions (lions, bears etc.) taken away by Maneka Gandhi. It only has a lone camel and a lone elephant now. It has lost its artists and jugglers. In the age of mobile Internet people are no longer fooled by multi-headed wonders (they know it is a trick and won’t pay a ticket). The shops are no longer attractive as markets have reached people and removed the need to shop annually. The artisans find it hard to compete with Chinese goods and there are few takers for their low-quality hand made products. You can clearly see who all have been left behind in these changing times.

I asked some of them, selling tablas, carpets, worship-items and earthenware, how do they manage to survive (since I could not see any customers at all). They told me about how they travel to big weekly haats and similar fairs all the year around. They move from one place to another in search of markets. They set up a camp in one city and move to nearby places. On Monday there would be a haat in Kelakhera, on Tuesday in Patti, on Wednesday in Gularbhoj, on Thursday in Pirumdara and so on. Once they exhaust a particular area, they move on. The family moves with the kids, who left school after Class 5, when they were old enough to move around with the family. It seemed like this was the only way of life that was known to them, the only one from which they knew how to earn sustenance. They cannot change it even if it under threat since the only possible option is working as agricultural or migrant labor (which might not pay much).

The fair, long having lost the customers and now irrelevant as a market, looked very ancient. The animal market was still abuzz. The circus workers lived in squalid camps and their numbers and size significantly reduced. Urban consumers, who have better options, hardly stop and shop. And the numbers of villagers shopping will probably reduce too.


But it would be far fetched to write an obituary to the fair. There will be people, however low their numbers, who will come, shop and enjoy the fair. Even if they are left behind, in reduced numbers and reduced incomes, they will still survive with this way of life. Some of them will probably give-up and move on (I did not ask anything about their future, only how did they do in past). But others will continue to clutch on to this rapidly diminishing slice of life.

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