The Wooden Mask or " Mukha"
Channel: Dr.Dilip De Sarker
Date: 10/10/2022

Mask culture
Mask culture is one of the greatest traditional art form and folk culture among the Rajbanshis of North Bengal, the northern part of West Bengal state of India. West Bengal is a north-eastern state of India. This folk art has been in practice from time immemorial. The peoples answer is that they have been in the practice for 5-6 generations. Mask is locally called ‘Gomira’, is a source of deep cultural and ritualistic heritage of traditional village art form. Preparation of mask and its dance form is found throughout  the world either in western or in the Oriental culture, but uniqueness of this ‘Gomira’ art form is making of mask from few particular single wood block or from ‘shola’ cork wood  and performed as ritualistic theatre during the closing days of last month(‘Chaitra’) of the Bengali calendar. The last day of Bengali calendar is very auspicious and  termed as ‘Chaitra Sankranti’ for seeking blessings of the God ‘Shiva’ and goddess ‘Durga’ or ‘Chandi’in the hope for higher crop grain yield and healthy family.
Most of the masks have the facial characteristics of mythological or ‘Puranistic’ facial description of various ‘Hindu’ God-Godess like, Shiva, Durga, Shiv-Kali along with various animated animal facial masks.
The ritualistic dance-drama may be of hours long duration or lesser to an hour. However, this local ritualistic dance-drama has paved the way of local entertainment following particular ‘Moon month’.
There has been more than 20 troupe of performing artists, and they are concentrating in and around the villages of Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur districts. The villages namely, Around 300 artists live in the villages like Mahishbathan, Sabdalpur, Beldanga, Ushaharan, Madhupur, Berail, Deyabandh, Mangaldaha, Hat Kaliyaganj ,Khagail, Boragram, Thilbil, Jamuna village, Krishnapur village, Kunor etc. More precisely these villages distributed in the two blocks namely, Kushmondi(Lat 25.526469 deg N and Long 88.3652122 deg E) and Kaliaganj(  Lat 25.5360 deg N & Long 88.4210 deg E). Each troupe consists of mask artists and musical playing artists. 
Interestingly there are no vocal artists but there are story tellers who tell the story from behind. The whole performance is done is an open area, and there is no stage. Sometimes the place of performance is fixed in the open court yard of a mandir or sometimes at a distinctive place of the village. Keeping  wooden Masks at home is equated to worshiping God and Goddess.  
As a part of ritual, the mask of Kali, Chamunda, Shikni Dhal, Bura Buri, Narasingh, etc. are kept in a very auspicious place of the house and worshipped daily and kept with utmost care and security. It is a common faith that the mask protects the owner from all evils.

From Point of Audiovisual  I wanted to portray this dying culture for its survivability and its beauty may be enjoyed throughout the world through this documentary film.

Dr. DILIP DE SARKER, LRPS, ARPS, EFIAP/B