Folk music, local cuisine, scenic Himalayan setting. The upcoming Kholey Dai festival in a Kalimpong village has a lot of attractions for travellers, but at its heart lies the story of a community’s unity and resilience.
What brings a community together? A common purpose. Check. Desire to make things happen. Check. A cohesive and planned approach. Check. The people of Parengtar, a village located near the India-Bhutan border in West Bengal, have been able to tick all the boxes. And the result is the Kholey Dai festival that will unfold in the pristine hilly surroundings of this village in December this year, being held in collaboration with Village Square.
The 3-day event, scheduled to begin on 15 December, showcases the local culture by blending folk music, agricultural practices and rural tourism – all in a sustainable way. The community-led initiative aims to bring the village on the country’s map, contributing towards its betterment while preserving its cultural essence.
“The new generation is not interested in staying in villages. Even agricultural practices are vanishing fast,” said Roshan Rai, president, Parengtar Nawlo Umang Welfare Society. “Parengtar is the last few remaining villages in the area where paddy, a labour and cost-intensive crop, is still grown. We want to keep that tradition alive, and make it possible for the youth to feel confident about carrying forward their cultural heritage.”
The Kholey Dai festival began taking shape during the Covid-19 pandemic, recalled Praveen Chettri, a photographer and the owner of Cafe Kalimpong, situated in the tourist-heavy hill station that lies about 100 km from Parengtar.
“While distributing essential rations during the pandemic in Parengtar in 2021, we coincidentally arrived on the day marking Assar Pandra, the symbolic first day of paddy sowing,” said Chettri, who is one of the organisers of Kholey Dai. “We saw that the local community felt a deep connection with their farming heritage and a shared desire for agricultural revitalisation. What followed was a period of lively conversations that spanned several months and led to Kholey Dai.”
The festival now makes Parengtar a buzzing venue with live performances from folk musicians, bands and artistes from the northeastern parts of India like the Darjeeling hills and Sikkim, and Nepal; workshops on local crafts, food, storytelling, arts and biodiversity; and immersive tourism programmes.
A traditional harvest festival, Kholey Dai (kholey means porridge and dai is the dehusking process done after rice is harvested) has been an occasion of community bonding in the region. People here earlier practised parma, a type of barter of labour, wherein villagers gathered to work together in each other’s fields. After the paddy was harvested, they collected at night to sing and dance over the grain to remove the husk.
“It’s believed that many in the old times found their partners during such dances,” said Arunavh Dam, the co-founder of Muhaan, an organisation working to promote rural tourism in the area and one of the organisers of Kholey Dai.
But Kholey Dai also evokes memories of pain and struggle for residents of Parengtar. The Gorkhaland movement of 1986 and ethnic tensions in Bhutan in 1991 had a major impact on the lives of people here who earlier regularly visited the neighbouring country as farm labourers. Restrictions placed on their migration led to a livelihood crisis and the villagers got trapped in a debt cycle.
“Facing lack of enough manpower, the village elders decided to involve the children also to dehusk the rice grains,” said Rai, 32, as he recalled his childhood. “Kids danced on the harvested grain till late at night under the light of kerosene lamps, after which we were fed gruel made from freshly harvested rice.”
Rai, who has studied up to class 8, is leading the work for the Kholey Dai festival locally. Like most residents of Parengtar, he has seen challenging times.
“Until 2010, there was no road, electricity or water connection in our village. Most people had studied only up to the primary level, and were under heavy debt from moneylenders,” said Rai. “We grew a lot of paddy but barely had enough to eat. The middlemen took almost the entire crop, leaving us with leftover low-quality grains that we used to consume as watery gruel.”
At the school too, children were mistreated.
“Even as kids, we worked in the fields before reaching the classes. We weren’t dressed so well,” recounted Rai. “I used to feel bad that teachers were the ones shunning us instead of boosting our morale. That’s why I decided that we should do something to uplift the village.”
The organisers now encourage the local youngsters to participate in cultural pursuits like singing, dancing and working as tour guides for the visitors. The village has about 25 homestays to host travellers, including Rai’s Rangaka Su-Kim farmstay.
“Notably, the residents of Parengtar have embraced zero-waste practices as a vital aspect of their community,” added Chettri.
A part of the revenue from the festival is also contributed towards the welfare of the residents of Parengtar, said Dam. However, though Kholey Dai has reached its 3rd edition this year, challenges remain. In a village where migration of youth for studies or work opportunities is a regular practice, it becomes difficult to get trained regular workers, he pointed out.
“Funding has also been a big issue, besides lack of adequate marketing and manpower resources,” said Muhaan co-founder Vicky Sharma, talking about their crowd-funding initiative. “Since all of us are based in this Himalayan region, we face difficulties in reaching out to the funding organisations located in big cities.”
Rai however is upbeat with the changes Kholey Dai is bringing to Parengtar.
“We have been a unified village, which is the primary requirement for any community endeavour. We are still facing challenges with organising the festival but these are good challenges,” he said, adding that Kholey Dai is an effort to preserve the Gorkha culture, which is slowly getting lost. “Kholay Dai has given a different image to Parengtar, which was considered a backward village not so long back.”
How to register:
Check the details here https://www.muhaan.in/events/kholeydai-annual-harvest-music-festival-2023
The lead image at the top shows a traditional dance performance held during an earlier edition of Kholey Dai (Photo courtesy Muhaan)
Pallavi Srivastava is Associate Director, Content, at Village Square.
