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SHILLONG, December 13
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or the third straight year, the town of Tikrikilla in West Garo Hills (WGH) held its annual 120 drums Wangala festival in the Tikrikilla HS School ground. Egged on by a crowd of more than 6000 who stood through the day to witness the event, 12 teams fought to be the best in the day with Tongapara emerging as the winner, taking home rupees 20 thousand as prize money.
The Wangala troupes of Raksamgre Youth Club and Sampalgre came 2nd and 3rd respectively.
The event was held under the aegis of the Balgito Youth & Socio-Cultural club and sponsored by the GSU Tikrikilla unit.
“This year we had more than 30 teams who wanted to be a part of the festival in Tikrikilla but we could only accommodate 12 for the one day event. Hopefully we can make it grander the next year,” said the chairman of the event, Walseng Sangma.“We are happy that so many are now taking the Wangala form seriously and it shows that our culture is catching on with the younger generation. What more can we ask when most of the performers are young people of our community?” added Sangma adding that the effort will now be to make the event bigger.
The harvest festival of the Garo community is being showcased as the tourism highlight of the region and on that count the event was a huge push in the right direction.
The dance which in itself is the celebration of the Garo way of life and signifies the events of harvesting the Garo way, has rapidly caught the imagination of the people.
“This is the culture we need to promote and we are really happy it is being done in such a grand way. Even the Chief Minister, Dr Mukul Sangma has promised to be a part of the show given the popularity of the festival in Tikrikilla next year,” said the chief guest and Tikrikilla MLA, Michael T Sangma.
“We used to be able to witness the Wangala festival earlier only in Tura but now since the past three years we have been able to witness this rich culture in our place. This is the culture that the region has and the effort is to maintain this culture. As they say, a tribe is known by its culture as without culture we are lost,” said MDC, Ranjit Rabha.
The highlight of the day was the 120 drums coming together to the beat of the specially designed drums and the dance of more than 250 people together.
