Boro Bhromon Day 3: Rajshahi University and Mahle community

On the third day of the trip, we stayed within the limits of Rajshahi. In the morning, we visited Rajshahi University. I was able to visit the departments of Folklore and Anthropology while I was there. From the Folklore department, I acquired a really good reading list in the form of their syllabus for both the undergraduate and graduate level. I made some good contacts in the anthropology department, and it was fun to talk to a group of anthropologists in Bangla. (This day was also the first day when I began to actually understand everything that was being said.) After visiting these two departments, Munmun took us to the Department of Applied Physics and the department of Communication. All four departments fed us, so over the course of two hours we ate: biscuits, two cups of tea, crackers, shingara, and mishti. After visiting the departments we took a driving tour of the university.

We then drove back into Rajshahi proper, where there was a small research museum run by Rajshahi university. After visiting this museum, we went to lunch at a Bengali Chinese restaurant.

After lunch, we visited the Mahle community, a small adivasi group living in Rajshahi. This group is mostly Catholic, and has an organization devoted to the preservation of their culture and language. We were hosted by this organization. It apparently has classes to teach the children about their culture, including learning traditional song and dance. The children from these classes gave a cultural performance for us, and then taught us a dance. I also taught them a dance that I learned at the Panegyri Greek festival in Cincinnati. After the cultural performance, they fed us – what else? – mango. There were also some speeches about the organization’s work. After the main event, I talked to the head of the cultural organization and found out that linguists created a script for the Mahle language in 2006 as part of an endangered languages project. It is based on the Western alphabet. Several of us were shown into the organization’s offices, and they gave the whole group two books – one a general overview of the community, and the other their collected songs in Mahle and Bengali.

We then went to the silk milling area of the city and went shopping. Rajshahi is known for its silk, as well as its mangos, so we had to buy some while we were there. I bought a silk sari. At one of the silk mills, a few of us ran into a very enthusiastic tour guide who showed us a demonstration area where silk worms were raised. The Bangladeshi variety of silkworm actually creates larger cocoons and better quality silk than the varieties used commonly in other countries. Leaving the silk area, we tried to buy some molasses bars in downtown Rajshahi, but they jacked the prices up by 600% for the bideshis so we ended up not buying any.