Harendra Shah, a minor farmer from Mahua in Bihar’s Vaishali district, is overjoyed to be at the world-famous Sonepur fair because he managed to buy a “small, capable-looking” horse here. British youth Mitchell Labiak, 21, a university student in Bristol, needs no horse, but he is happy as he found in Asia’s largest cattle fair a “rare sight of real India”.
Close to the confluence of two mighty rivers, Ganga and Gandak, about 25 km from Patna, the grand cornucopia of Sonepur fair erupts every winter with multitudes of people and animals, dance and music, buying and selling, briskly waking up this sleepy village to its rare global fame. It is a tradition dating back to the ancient reign of the great emperor Chandragupta Maurya, who is said to have bought his horses and elephants here. Like in previous years, this noisy rural fair, known among local purists as Harihar Kshetra Mela out of respect for the Sonepur temple’s presiding deity Harihar Nath, is attracting visitors from far and wide, though on a decidedly diminishing scale due to the many technology-driven diversions it fails to compete with.
The persisting moniker of “cattle fair” is really a misnomer at Sonepur because, apart from all kinds of cattle, the month-long fair on a sprawling meadow trades in horses, elephants, donkeys, camels, birds, goats, monkeys and dogs along with sundry farming and domestic articles most rural folks come looking for. The presence and sale of oxen, cows and buffaloes has slowly declined here over the past ten years due to rising use of machinery in agriculture and a general shift away from farming. But traders said the last two years brought a sharp fall in cattle arrivals here mainly due to a ban on cattle export to Bangladesh.
Presence of elephants has also dwindled due to the ban on their sale and purchase. This has snatched much of the charms from the ritual bathing of elephants, or “hathi-snan,” a major attraction for natives and foreigners alike. In 2012, only about 40 elephants have come to the fair from Chhapra, Siwan, Gopalganj and Motihari in Bihar and a few bordering districts of UP, as against over 100 in 2000, said Mahendra Prasad, a mahout. But the other animals, particularly horses numbering about 5,000, are present in hundreds and still a rage here.
Ramesh Chandra, a horse trader from Agra, UP, has come with 52 horses and expects to sell “at least 45” by the time the fair ends on December 26. He managed to sell 50 of the 60 horses he brought here in 2011. “My prices this time range between `15,000 and `70,000. This is a good place to sell horses. I have been coming here with my father and our horses for 40 years,” he said. “The horses are getting less strong with each passing year and business is coming down, though still profitable with low margins. But these animals of galloping speed cannot match very long with new roads coming up in remote villages and the cheap cars available with cheap loans,” said Rameshwar Yadav, a horse-trader from Balia, UP, who has sold horses here for the past 15 years.
The “small, capable-looking” horse Harendra Shah bought for `15,100 from Viswajit Singh, a horse-seller from Sonepur, will help in taking its new owner on a ride through his farm and to the village market. “I have no money for a motorcycle or car, much less for petrol or diesel,” said Mr Shah.
Horse-owner and enthusiast Amaresh Singh, a prosperous farmer from Chapra, sits with his brother, Shitanath Singh, under a tent, with his stately female horse, Rani, tied to a post close by and munching grams. “It is a pleasure to display my horse here among hundreds of others’ horses. I have been coming here for the past 20 years only to display my horse. I buy a horse only if I find an irresistible one,” he said.
“Horses are still more powerful than most motor vehicles, but very few can afford and maintain a good horse or even a few oxen and cows. Increasing migration of people looking for work outside Bihar is killing agriculture and the use of these animals,” said Arjun Singh, 80, a wealthy farmer from Naubatpur in Patna district who has been buying horses and cattle at this fair for 50 years.
But Gyani Baba, a bearded 70-year-old wandering sage in Sonepur, neither owns a horse nor does he want to, but he likes the thrill of riding horses at this fair. “I have enjoyed riding borrowed horses here for five years now. The sheer speed opens some closed doors in my senses,” he said.
The handful of camels at this fair is for exhibition, as few people now want to buy one. But donkeys find brisk buyers and dogs are lapped up by many, mostly women in newly urban areas ready to pay between `6,000 and `15,000 for a pups of German Shepherds or Labradors. Little monkeys are also up for grabs for about `1,500.
Besides the animals, it is the heady dances and folk theatre that still remain central to the fair’s charms for Bihar’s people. Inside large tents with facades showing pictures of skimpily-clad women, teenage girls in skimpier clothes, mostly from West Bengal and UP, dance in rustic, suggestive gyrations accompanied by deafening music and fast-changing light. Throngs of viewers visit these “theatres” at all hours till late after the midnight. They sit in areas separated from the stage by barbed-wire fences and they clap and whistle ecstatically at certain irresistible moments during the dances to seductive Bollywood songs like Ooh la la and Chikni Chameli. They often try to climb onto the stage to shake a leg with the girls and ugly clashes happen with the theatre managers’ men.
“The situation inside the theatre gets unbearably vulgar around midnight as the dancers begin shedding their little clothes. The theatre people sometimes beat up many in the crowd with bamboo sticks to control them,” said Rajesh Kumar Rai, 25, a tractor driver from Marhaua in Chapra district, who was watching a noon show. Foreign tourists find Sonepur fair tempting for it offers at one place so much of rural India that the cities often miss. The Bihar government, which tasked its tourism department with of organising the fair for the first time in 2012, has worked hard to retain and increase foreign tourists’ interest in the event. The 20 “Swiss cottages” — makeshift bamboo huts furnished with electric lamps, a bed and a toilet with running water — allow foreigners to spend a night on the fair ground for `4,110 a night. Ajay Kumar, a tourism department official in charge of the cottages, said 60 guests, mostly foreigners, lived in these cottages in 2011.