David Mccutchion made a journey to Bangladesh for his research on the temples of that country.On returning he noted: ‘In last October I went to East Pakistan for seeing the temples, mosques and ancient palaces. I roamed tirelessly from the beginning till the end, by train, by bus, by steamer and by launch boats; I did not have any repose to stay for more than four days in a place. I crossed green sugarcane fields that stretched through miles after miles.’
Mccutchion was born in a middle class family in 1930 at Coventry in England. After receiving his education, he stepped in India for teaching in 1957. His inexorable concern for the culture of Bengal could not confine him within the limit and scope of a university thereby motivating Mccutchion to travel anywhere and everywhere. The time when he visited East Pakistan, in about 1964, travelling was not as easy as it is nowadays. Yet he gathered impetus from his undaunted, self-convinced and inquisitive spirit.
If I say Mccutchion is not the focal point of this article, critics may ask why I have excluded Jones, Canningham and Maxmuller in respect of their contribution to research and restoration of the past glory of India and where their shortcomings exist.
To speak the truth, the central theme of this article envisages how the western researchers, genuinely ardent, become one with the Bengali folk tradition as I myself have seen them doing so and the mention of Mccutchion is made for the prefatory purpose.
Jeremy Hanse is American by birth; doing is Ph.D. in the University of California in Santa Barbara. His topic of research is Bhava and Affective Performance in South Asian
Tradition. We first met at the Department of Comparative Literature in Jadavpur University. I don’t know why he selected the ‘Sitalamangal Palagan’, but I realized that his works range far beyond the ambit of a university. Jeremy, too, understood it well. That’s why he seemed restless to visit the remote villages the moment he arrived here. I showed him the video that I had at my disposal and that made him more interested. I took him to a ‘Palagan’ programme one day.
The programme was organized at Jagadishpur village under Sonarpur Police Station. The villagers organize such palagans every year on the occasion of ‘grampujo’. On reaching there by seven thirty or eight o’clock in the evening, we saw most of the stage preparation was underway. A small triangular space in front of the temple was set with dice. It was a bamboo scaffolding on which polythene sheet was being attached and lights and speakers were also being tied. This would be the stage of the ‘palagan’ for that night.
As soon as Jeremy got an idea of the stagecraft, he took his camera out and began to take photos fast. Then we moved on to the artistes for a bit of talk. They were busy with their make up materials inside a front open mudwalled and thatched room. Jeremy had his set of questions ready, we interrogated them, but our conversation went well beyond the questionnaire. Needless to say, the conversation had many out of context issues too, like, some perform the rites of exorcism curing the sick by providing sanctified water, some remedy labour pain by prescribing the ‘Thandhowa jawl’ of Bibima – all these got revealed to us because of the amicably discursive chat we had. The faith of folk germinates in an altogether different plane which must be perceived; otherwise we would invariably fail to understand why ‘Sitala’ is considered to be the controller of sixty four diseases. These men are subdued to these gods and goddesses due to long prevailing seclusion from the so called urbane classes, poverty and want, dearth of education and deficiency of transport and infrastructure.
We recorded the palagan all through that night. Jeremy was active from the beginning till the end, occasionally taking notes. The enviable crowd that gathered during the initial stage, dismantled at the break of dawn only leaving a handful of old, god-fearing folks who stayed there till the end in the fear of probable harm. A few of the organizers also remained there to cater to the needs of the artistes.
I felt a little embarrassed to Jeremy for our indifference to our own culture. As if to atone for this, I explained to Jeremy that nowadays people do not have much time after the day’s hard toil to sustain a nightlong programme.
It is a remarkable characteristic trait of the foreigners that they feign not to understand anything when they have understood everything and we do just the opposite. Fortunately the manager of the show did not slash any part of the programme for lack of audience. Jeremy paid intent attention to every detail of the programme without caring what was happening around. He looked so dedicated that it seemed he did not know anything about it, not even the video that I had shown him.
I remember another one. She is Rowena, Rowena Potts. I did not enquire of her nationality and identity. I just heard that she was a Ph.D. scholar in a renowned university in her country. So far as I can call up, her topic of research was the ‘Mazars’ of India. I myself was a Ph.D. scholar at that time, working under the Department of Comparative Literature. As I worked in C.A.S. (Phase II) I used to wander across the two 24 Parganas in search of oral literature with a massive camera on my back. I forgot to know much about Rowena. But I remember the day on which we met. It was on 17 th Shravan of 2013 under a clouded sky, we travelled together by train to the Pirer Mela of Ghutiary Sharif.

Rowena began capturing photos of the red and yellow cords and different pickles available on the platform. Some vendors themselves put some of their merchandise on her hand in expectation of a brisk business, failing which some jeered at her. Rowena understood Bengali a little. So she made out what they were telling about her. But she accepted all the remarks gleefully.
The burial ground of Mobarak Gazi and his folks is situated on the right of the main Mazar. Nur Mohammed Dewan worked as a ‘sebait’ in one of those burials. Aged about 65-70, long bearded, slim and wearing a yellowish cloth, he wore a pair of brown framed spectacles. He did not know English, yet he knew Hindi as a trait of interacting with tourists from various parts of India. As soon as we approached him, on hearing Rowena’s research he began to unroll the history of the Mazar ranging from the Raja Madan Roychowdhury to Jainul Abedin Mian, the proprietor of a sugar mill in Burdwan. We realized that he made the whole anecdote available at his vocal cord which comes into action whenever he gets a chance to enumerate.
When we moved on to the Makkapukur beside the Mazar, we found many tourists offering roses to it and waiting for their turn in that oval shaped water body. Rowena spent a long time in observing the action as if she was in an archaeological expedition. Perhaps she could see Raja Madan Roychowdhury himself standing beside the pond.
The reason why I brought Jeremy and Rowena to discussion is that as the foreigners feel deeply attached to our folk cultures, similar attachment is also required on our part to dive deep into our own origin. Universal as it is, not only does it tend to assimilate, but also helps in conciliation.

Glossary
Palagan: Narrative folk ballads in Bengali
Devi Sitala: A Hindu goddess of diseases.
Mazar: A shrine of a saint of the Islamic religion.