The IIACD team was on a documentation visit to the Veerabhadraswami Temple at Lepakshi in late August when the District Collector (Sri V. Durga Das IAS) and the local MLA (Sri P Abdul Ghani from Hindupur) made a site visit. They were delighted to learn about the IDH project and shared with us that Lepakshi is on the short list for world heritage status from UNESCO. The DPRO from Kurnool (Sri Thimmiah) informed us that they were organizing the first Lepakshi Festival on September 8-9th 2012. They were keen that IIACD take a stall and make presentations about the DST IDH interest in Vijayanagara site at Lepakshi. IIACD, NIAS and NID collaborated to create an informative and lively IDH stall that proved to be a popular attraction at the festival with more than 1000 visitors and several engaging conversations.
The IDH teams approached the planning for the festival with the purpose of projecting the works done by IICAD, NIAS and NID(under Digital Hampi Project, funded by Dept. of Science and Technology, India) on Vijayanagara art and especially on Lepakshi to the local people, ASI regional cluster, etc. The other purpose was to document the festival with still photography and video footage of the festival. This content would be used towards the collection of intangible heritage related to Vijayanagara in the knowledge bank compilations.
આ તહેવાર માટે તૈયારીમાં સમાવેશ થાય છે:
- Designing and printing of Banners, Posters and Flyers.
- NID compilations of attire and headgear, textiles and print patterns depicted in the murals and sculptures at Lepakshi. These were prepared as attractive “albums” that could be visually scanned at the stall.
- Mural Interactive Display: From a collection of Lepakshi maps and mural images, IIACD designed a web page using Lepakshi map marking the mural positions on the map. Moving the cursor on the map and clicking on mural icons cause the pop up of highlighted blocks showing the respective murals. The mural can be zoomed in and out by clicking on any part and enlarging the clicked portion.
- Introductory video about the Lepakshi Veerabhadraswami Temple using Girrija Kalyana as a theme. It shows entrance of the temple, pillars, Kalyana mantapa where the guide Virupanna is narrating the Girija Kalyana story. It ends with information of the organizations (IIACD, NIAS, DST)
- Slideshow of lepakshi murals. This slideshow contains images of Lepakshi Murals, Sculptures, Natya Mandapa Ceiling, Kalyana Mantapa, Pradakshina Murals, Deities and Priest.
As it turned out, the IDH stall was the only stall at the festival that was truly dedicated to Lepakshi Veerabhadraswami Temple(prompting one tourism official to suggest that next year the entire exhibition should be planned by the IDH team). The ASI stall had a focus on all AP sites – only 2 boards in their stall were on Lepakshi. The festival was largely a popular exhibition with cotton candy sellers, stalls on organic agriculture, volleyball matches etc. Connections with heritage had to be sought but there were several significant ones making the effort doubly worthwhile.
Day 1 (September 8th) began with the procession from the monolithic Nandi sculpture in the outermost Prakara of the temple to the Festival site with some floats representing scenes from the temple. Local performers dressed as dolls, fierce Bhutas (as devotees of Veerabhadra), a troop of Sikh performers with bullocks and camels, alongside a chariot carrying local political leaders were part of the procession which was attended by a huge crowd. The documentation team has captured several scenes in video and stills. The crowd was immense and the best option to film this procession was running and gunning. This enabled the capture of some “candid camera” moments like late arrival of the person playing Lord Krishna and the chariot carrying some local politicians getting stuck due to its “grandeur.”- Afternoon to night - Local MLA and other political figures visited the festival ground, and several came to the IDH stall. Many groups of students, teachers, textile/sari designers visited the stall. Telugu speaking people in our group spoke to the people extensively about our ongoing work, presented the interactive videos, and answered queries about the compilations by the NID team on the traditional dresses, fabric, headgear depicted in the mural paintings and sculptures of the temple.
- The night of the 8th was when performances related to rich intangible heritage themes were presented at the festival.
- Theatre – a serious theatrical presentation about the story of Virupanna, the builder of the Veerabhadraswami Temple. Some clips of the festival performance were captured and the actor (Sri Subba Rao) later repeated the emotional Virupanna soliloquy the next day for the IIACD team to film.
Bomalatta (traditional puppetry) rendition of the story of hanuman reaching Sita in Lanka and handing her Rama’s ring. Video captured.- A fictional play (hugely popular) of Krishnadevaraya holding court in Kailasam with guest appearances by contemporary “kings” NTR and YSR.
- 9th September morning - Unveiling ceremony of the Virupanna statue near the entrance of Veerabhadraswamy temple was photographed.
- 9th Afternoon- images and videos are taken in the fair beside the main road in Lepakshi which was integral part of the festival.
- 9th night – return to Bangalore.
Re-narration by Amrapali in Gujarati targeting Art and culture for this web page
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