Carrying forward the flag of Koya tribes and their stories

As millions of devotees converge astatine Medaram astatine the foothills of Chilkalgutta for 3 days for the jatara, immoderate of the families person with them bequest flags oregon arsenic they are called ‘padaga’ oregon ‘dalugudda’ that are decades and adjacent a period old. As the families crippled and program their sojourn to the spiritual bosom of the Koya tribe, the flags flutter from ample hired vehicles, carts and makeshift tents. Flags shaped similar a triangle that archer a communicative of gattu oregon gotra of each family.

“Now, I and my member are the lone flagmakers I person been doing it for the past 10 years. Other flagmakers person retired oregon person stopped making them,” says Tholem Kalyan, whose member Tholem Venkateswarlu has been making the flags for the past 20 years from their household location successful Aswapuram Mandal successful Bhadradri Kothagudem district.

When the reimagined abstraction for the Samakka Saralamma platforms was being created by the Telangana authorities it was these flags crafted by the 2 brothers that helped the sculptors chisel the shapes. Symbols and shapes that scope from a bull, geometrical shapes, oversized humans, elephants and different creatures large and tiny that present find abstraction connected the gigantic chromatic pillars and arches.

“The flags are not conscionable random images. We spell and acquisition reddish cloth from Kothegudam aft a household asks america to marque a flag. Each emblem has implicit 90 images. On an auspicious day, we statesman enactment by cutting retired the shapes that each family’s communicative has. Then we stitch them connected the emblem that takes up to 3 months of time,” informs Mr. Kalyan. While the 2 brothers stitch and make the flags determination implicit 100 Koya families that usage the aforesaid emblem to narrate their household histories.

“The koya people past is narrated by people artistes known arsenic artikalakarlu. They usage the emblem and sing and narrate the communicative for an assembled audience. That is however the oral past of the people is carried forward,” says Jayadheer Tirumala Rao, an ethnographer whose postulation of objects see akin flags with chartless vintage.

The communal constituent successful each the flags see a snake, Hanuman, sun, satellite and stars. As the families assemble and perceive to the people artistes narrating the clan history, different procreation learns astir the instauration of the satellite from a cracked egg, the large battles of their ancestors, their ain household and the magical beings with which they stock the world.