My Oneiric visit to "Jonbeel Mela"
Schoolbooks mentioned something called barter as the most primal form of transaction, before the invention of currency. This is something that I generally do not get to see nowadays if I exclude the answers exchanged with the people sitting beside me in certain exams. I am sure it is true for most other people too. That is exactly why I have been trying to visit Jonbeel Mela. But one or the other way my efforts go in vain. I’ve always heard my elder brother preaching about Joonbeel, and how it reflected the way of life people are accustomed to. How the economic ways are different and unique from that of us. To be frank it was my brother and his photographs taken at Joonbeel that made me more attracted towards it. For the uninitiated, Jonbeel Mela in Assam is a yearly fair where people from different ethnic groups gather and exchange goods without using any money, just like their ancestors used to do. The exact year of start is probably not known but it is a tradition that has been ca...