With the south-west monsoon gradually setting in, boat races will soon begin in several rural pockets of West Bengal — in Murshidabad, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas — even though the tradition here does not enjoy the kind of countrywide popularity as enjoyed by the one in Kerala. “Boat races usually begin in the middle of the rainy season and they continue till September, sometimes till October, even November in some places. That way, boat race in Bengal held on a far greater scale in Kerala, where it is held only during the Onam festival with only one kind of boat participating,” said anthropologist Swarup Bhattacharyya, who has been documenting Bengal boats for nearly three decades now.
He has been making scientific models of the boats for the past few years to preserve them for posterity. Lesser-known tradition Mr. Bhattacharyya held an exhibition in Kolkata of his boat models sometime ago and his most recent creation is a model of Sorengi, one of the traditional racing boats of Bengal.
“Unlike in Kerala, here four to five kinds of traditional boats are used for the races; that way we are ahead of them, but unfortunately, we are not as famous. Even people in Kolkata are hardly aware of the boat races of Bengal,” he said. According to Mr.
Bhattacharyya, boat race — called nouka baich in Bengal — is essentially a part of Southeast Asian culture and is most common in countries such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and, of course, Bengal, including Bangladesh .
