(Top) Dancers Atreyee Mazumdar and Kaveri Sen in performance at the inauguration of the Orissa festival in Swabhumi and (above) Amit Kiran Deb releases a book on the same occasion. Pictures by Rashbehari Das

A week-long festival celebrating the spirit and culture of Orissa is on, coinciding with the state’s main festival Rath Yatra.

Shri Jagannath Seva Samity, formed in the mid-Eighties, has been organising the event for years, till three years ago when Utkala, its cultural wing, took over.

Now, the festivities have shifted from Kidderpore to Salt Lake, and the fun that starts on Rath lasts through till Ulta-rath.

Utkala, with a member base of around 5,000 city-based Oriyas, was formed to propagate and popularise the culture, craft and language of Orissa. It also spots local talent and gives them a chance to perform on a bigger platform.

The festival, which commenced on July 8, will end on July 16, but not before a plethora of events and cultural functions are held. The first day of the festival saw the deities making the journey from Salt Lake’s Central Park to Swabhumi, where they will be kept till Ulta-rath, when the chariot will transport them back to Central Park.

From there, it is back to the Kidderpore temple by more conventional forms of conveyance.

The cultural activity ? for which over 200 artistes have come down from Orissa ? kicked off on July 9 with an Odissi dance performance by Atreyee Mazumdar and Kaveri Sen, disciple of Odissi exponent Aloka Kanungo.

On the evening of July 10, it was over to a group of 20 flautists led by Guru Mohini Mohan Pattanaik. Nilanjana Mukherjee will perform an Odissi piece on July 13 and Guru Santanu Mahapatra will bring the sound of Orissa’s instrumental folk music to the audience on July 15.

The festival is organised in collaboration with Eastern Zone Cultural Centre, Song and Drama Division of India and Department of Culture, Government of Orissa.

While the event has grown in scale, it started with local roots. “We had a temple in a small house in Kidderpore from where the Rath Yatra started. The masima bari was also a small house nearby. But when a bigger, full-fledged temple came up three years ago, we started doing the yatra in a more elaborate manner,” says Lalatendu Mohanty, president of Utkala.

Some compromises had to be made, however. Owing to traffic congestion that could be caused, the three deities are brought on the same chariot, instead of three separate floats as is customary.

“It is a long distance and would create a lot of commotion,” says Mohanty. The rath no longer sets out from the Kidderpore temple. The idols are brought to Central Park in Salt Lake in a vehicle, from where the trip starts to masima bari in Swabhumi, off E.M. Bypass.