Artist Profile: Shakuntala Pandey

When I asked her about her age, Sakuntala could not tell since her birth has not been recorded anywhere and no one has cared about her age so far. Why would anyone living in a village, doing household chores, taking care of children and feeding the cattle need to know one's age?

She is a mother of four children, three elder daughters and a son being the youngest of all. She explained that she need to have a son because he would carry the family name and when she and her husband died in future, he would incinerate their body, giving them safe passage to heaven. She also explained further that it was difficult to feed her four children but it was a small price to pay if she wanted a son.

Her eldest daughter was married off at an age of fifteen few hours away from Halkhori village. She said that she had the burden of marrying off two more daughters. She seemed little worried about getting resources for the dowry that she would have to pay during her daughters' marriages. However, she exclaimed that she was happy to be at the Jurshital Institute, which took her away from her usual family worries and responsibilities. She said that at the Institute she had time for herself and her beautiful creations of Mithila art.

Artist Profile: Kamani Devi

Kamani lives with her husband, Raman, two sons and a mother in law. However, her elder son lives four hours away with her sister in a village that has a better education facilities. The only source of income for her family is agriculture.

Years ago, her husband's elder brother, Chumman, was working as an illegal agent for sending laborers for manual jobs to countries such as Iran, Iraq, Dubai, Qatar, South Arabia, etc. Months later, the international immigration laws became highly strict due to September 11 tragic event, making it almost impossible for laborers to travel internationally. Hence, Chumman could not send most of his men to foreign countries though he had already taken huge amount of frees from them. As a result, all those people wanted their money back and Chumman fled from the village, leaving behind Kamani's family to pay back his loans. Hence, they had to sell most of their farmland and it took them years of extreme hard work and saving to recover and reacquire farmland for survival.

Kamani Devi was married at an age of fifteen. Due to early marriage, she bore her first child at an age of sixteen, who was born a sick girl child. It cost Kamani lots of money and resources for the treatment of her daughter but she died at an age of five. After that she gave birth to two more girls and they died as well.

However, she finally gave birth to two sons at later age of about twenty and twenty two. Due to these safer ages of bearing children, both her child were born healthy and she is now happy as a mother of two healthy sons. She is glad to have joined Jurshital Institute, as she hopes to gain some extra money to send her second son to her sister in law's house as well for a better education. She thinks that access to better education to both her sons will result into a better future of her family.

LifeStyle: Storage/Organization

Coming to the second chapter of lifestyle of Mithila Culture, I have put up two pictures. In the picture that is on the right, a mud built rack can been seen. These racks are made by mixing together soil, water, finely cut straw and small percentage of cow dung. They are mixed well and left for couple days so that there is elasticity in the mixed mud. Then the structure is started from the base and up. Meaning, first the base is built, left for couple days (or more depending on the weather) to semi-dry and then more pile of mud is added, adding to the height of the rack. Different shapes are made depending upon the desire and creativity of the Mithila women making them. After the rack is fully dry, it becomes ready for putting things in/on it. The topmost layer is used to keep bigger size objects, for example, the pots in the picture, while the middle/bottom layers are used to store light small objects such as yarn, oil bottle, make up kits, etc.

Similarly, the picture on the left is also made for keeping things in the house organized. This one in particular which is made around a pillar is at an higher reach and hence it is used for things that should be kept away from children, for instance, money, medications, sweets, yogurt, etc. The structure behind the pillar is called Kothi in Maithili language, which is simply a mod build round (sometimes rectangular) box used for storing grains such as lentils, paddy, rice, wheat, etc. All these things are made mostly by women. Men usually do not get involved in any activities that requires dealing with household works. They only work outside of the house.

LifeStyle: Cooking

As we are learning more about culture of Mithila paintings, I feel obliged to familiarize you with other cultural aspects of these Mithila families. One of the utmost important part of our lives if food and hence I thought I would bring about the cooking style in this culture.

As seen in the picture, the cooking stoves are usually made from mus that lasts longer and grown stronger with every use. Mithila women, soak a special kind of soil in water for few days before they mix the soil and water well. Then they use this mud to create cooking stoves and paint them with whitish soil again for better outlook.

The stoves have a small mouth through which firewood and other kinds of sources of fire such as those made from cow dung are fed and then lit. The cooking pot is put on top of the mud stove and then the fire is lit, which does the cooking. This traditional kind of cooking method takes longer than the regular electric stoves elsewhere. Also, the firewood produces a lot of smoke. However, once the food is cooked, only ashes are left behind, which is used for cleaning the cooking utensils after meals and/or in the fields for compost.