A Photographer's Search For The Vanishing Stars Of Bengali Folk Theater
Ten years after leaving his childhood home in West Bengal, photographer Soumya Sankar Bose returned to find that stars of Jatra, a popular local form of folk theater, were fading from public view.
Photographer Soumya Sankar Bose remembers how Jatra, a style of folk theater, was popular during his childhood in West Bengal. But 10 years after moving out, Bose returned home to find that Jatra was no longer celebrated nearly as much. The genre's brightest stars, once major celebrities, were fading from view. Even his own uncle, a famous Jatra performer, had to take a job at a train station to make ends meet.
Jatra originated in Bangladesh and the eastern Indian states of Odisha and Bihar. It's a living and vibrant form of theater, usually performed on open-air stages, inspired by Hindu mythology, popular legends and
