While multi-lingual facilitators hunt for the right word, Biju prompts Krishnan Kitna with names and imagery the two men are familiar with. Before long, answers to queries are in place. An old link made hazy and weak by time was bolstered when three Alu Kurumba teachers from the Nilgiris came to teach tribal art to 14 chosen men and women from the Palu Kurumba tribe of Attappady.
At a five-day workshop at Kerala Institute for Research Training and Development Studies of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (KIRTADS) in Kozhikode, two mountain tribes understood their implicit similarities and little differences. The Alu Kurumbas, a tribe with a long history of art, is now taking tiny steps and getting their indigenous art to bigger, mainstream avenues. It was difficult initially as those who knew and practised the art were getting fewer in number. That was when young Krishnan decided to watch and learn from his maternal grandmother and keep the tradition alive. He took the images of Alu Kurumba life and customs which men and women painted in their homes and divine places off the walls and recreated them on canvas. While he mastered it, he also passed it on to other youngsters in the tribe. “There are 15 of us who now practise and teach the art,” says Krishnan who came to Kozhikode with Balasubramanian and Ganesha to teach the Palu Kurumbas. Apart from workshops across the country, Krishnan and mates have painted their art on hotel walls and hand-made envelopes and cards.
When the KIRTADS team contemplated a training workshop, the Palu Kurumbas was the natural choice. “The Palu Kurumbas of Attappady are a particularly vulnerable tribe,” says Bindu S, director. “The two tribes are genealogically related; both “palu” and “alu” reflect their cattle-rearing way of livelihood,” she adds. While the Alu Kurumbas speak Kurumba with heavy Tamil influence, Palu Kurumbas do so with a mix of Malayalam. Though genealogically related, the Alu Kurumba’s flourish with colours are not pronouncedly reflected among the Palu Kurumbas, say KIRTADS officials.
Art found in the Palu Kurumba households, says P.V. Mini, deputy director, are largely design-oriented. Human forms, she says, are rarely present. “We do designs after plastering the walls with mud or cow dung and design with our fingers,” says Biju, a young man belonging to the Palu Kurumba tribe.
The Alu Kurumbas on the other hand paint all facets of their life. The ooru tradition women and men dance in circles, agriculture, the elaborate methods of honey-collection are all documented in their paintings. So too celebrations; such as the one associated with attaining puberty. “We too have all these celebrations and rituals. Differences are in the musical instruments we play during ooru -dance and the huts we build during shifting agriculture,” says Suneesh, a young Palu Kurumba man, who is learning to paint.
On the third-day of the workshop, the Palu Kurumba students are seen diligently making the backdrop colours — a slow gradation from yellow to green. “The top of their canvas is always green, representing the thick canopy of green that is an inevitable part of their lives,” says Mini. Trees, large and unbridled, are permanent fixtures in Alu Kurumba paintings. Leaves are never crushed into a bunch instead each is painstakingly painted and accounted for. Some canvases just have tree houses built at the time nearing harvest. The labour-intensive honey collection when Kurumbas climb intimidating heights on ladders layered with bamboo is captured in graphic detail. Like the trees, beehives are often present in most paintings. The human forms are similar in structure and simple in execution.
“Our paintings are done with four colours — green, yellow, brown and black,” explains Krishnan. “They derive black, yellow and brown from the sap of the venga (kino) tree. Different concentrations of it give different colours. From the leaves of the kaatta tree, they make green,” adds Mini.
Krishnan and Balasubramanian bring out some paintings done with natural colours. “Natural colours take a long time to dry on paper. So at the workshop we are teaching them to work with acrylic. But we also tell them how natural colours are made from the trees that are available in their region,” says Krishnan.
The institute officials admit art cannot be learnt in five days. But the workshop is meant to awaken the Palu Kurumbas to new possibilities. If pursued, they say, it could be a new document to vanishing ways of living and an opportunity to showcase their life to the outside world. “At a time when we are losing things that are our own, it is good to learn an art that embellishes our way of life,” says Suneesh.
