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HISTORY,
LEGENDS & MYTHOLOGY
Two villages of Uttar Pradesh exchange abuses to convey
love!
by Girish
Dubey
Jaunpur
(Uttar Pradesh): Believe it or not people of two
villages of Jaunpur--Kajhgoan and Rajepur--in Uttar
Pradesh exchange abuses to convey their affection
for each other. And Kajri, the carnival of abuses,
started long ago when the villages had a massive misunderstanding,
their quarrel, ended in a festival of love.
Legend
has it that a group of young girls from Kajhgoan village
in the Jaunpur district lost their way and wandered
into the neighbouring Rajepur village. As it became
late in the day, a villager offered them boarding
in his house.The girls accepted the offer and came
back home the following morning. But this snowballed
into a scandal when the girl's families got to know
of it. Local goons escorted elders of Kajhgoan to
force men from Rajepur to marry the girls, which they
refused.The verbal-slanging, which took place thereupon
among those agitated villagers, later on became a
tradition. Today, the two villages are popular in
the entire rural sector of Uttar Pradesh for this
unusual fair which has hurling of abuses as its main
feature.The occasion also involves a mock marriage
of eunuch, conducted by Kajhgoan villagers to fake
a groom from Rajepur. "It is actually abuses that
are spoken in love. Even those from the crowd enjoy
the proceedings.They might be from either village
or elsewhere. Proper marriage rituals are followed
during the entire fair.This tradition is being followed
from old days. But there is no animosity among anybody,"
says Ram Lal Gupta, a resident of Kajhgaon. Daya Shanker,
a resident of Rajepur village says : "We are only
following a tradition brought into existence by our
elders. People come on elephants and observe this
festival to abuse people from the other village."
-Sept
1, 2005
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