Tradition · match-making fair · India
Tarnetar Mela
Three days at the Trinetreshwar Mahadev temple in Surendranagar at Bhādrapada, and the most explicit marriage market in Gujarat: young men of the Koli, Bharwad, Rabari and Charan communities come to be looked at, carrying embroidered umbrellas they have made themselves, and the umbrella is the advertisement — its stitching is read as evidence of the household he comes from. Women choose. The temple's tank is held to be where Draupadī's svayamvara took place.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 22.646, 71.213
Worth knowing
The umbrellas are mirror-worked, appliquéd and up to a metre across, and a man carries his own; the craft exists almost entirely for this one fair and is made nowhere else for anything else.
Connections (1)
- AnalogueChitra Vichitra Fair
Two Gujarat fairs where the business is marriage, and the division of initiative is the interesting part. At Tarnetar the young men of the Koli, Bharwad and Rabari communities carry embroidered umbrellas they have made themselves and are looked at; the women choose, and the stitching is read as evidence of the household. At Chitra Vichitra, among the Garasia and Bhil, the fair opens with the women's night of weeping for the year's dead and turns to courtship at dawn.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Tarnetar”. Gujarat tourism records; Judy Frater, Threads of Identity, on Kutch and Saurashtra embroidery.
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