Celebration of hits and bruises

 

Pandhurna district in present day Madhya Pradesh. There is a sad love story in the local folklore. A boy from Pandhurna tried to elope with a girl from Sawargaon. The villages were situated on the opposite sides of a river named Jam. To stop the Pandhurna boy from eloping with their girl, thus bringing shame to the entire village, the Sawargaon villagers banded together and rained stones from their side. The villagers from the boy’s side also retaliated and pelted stones from their end.

Nobody knows about the fate of the boy and the girl. They are lost in old chest of the past. All this happened in remote past they say. The tale is old enough that none of the surviving villagers can claim to have seen it happening. The people of every generation have heard it from their elders. 

But the love tale, resulting in a stone-pelting squirmish, gave birth to a ritual—an annual stone-pelting battle to mark the old rivalry, boost honor and strengthen identity, and pamper the collective egos of the villagers facing each other from the river’s opposite banks. And thus comes into being the annual Gotmar fair.

In the morning people gather on their respective sides of the river and around 10 am stony missiles start hurling to break rival heads. One can see dozens of bloodied heads in remembrance of a love story gone wrong.

This year also (on August 23, 2025) about 1000 people were injured on both sides of the river. The administration had deployed hundreds of police personnel to handle the situation. Dozens of doctors, paramedics and ambulances waited to attend the injured. It was a battlefield from the look of it. Injured men would struggle out of the chaos with bloodied heads as the women took them to the waiting ambulances. Festival drums, yells, abuses and ambulance sirens filled the background.

Thousands have been injured and at least 15 persons have died in the last three-four decades since the authorities started keeping records. The administration tried to ban the festival a few times but people won’t let go of the custom. So now the administration deploys police and doctors to manage and control damaged heads and lacerated skins.

The opposing sides pelt stones at each other and run to snatch a flag hoisted on a dead tree in the middle of the river. Drunken revelers make it even more chaotic. In the past, a bullet came instead of a stone and claimed a life. Probably someone used the occasion to settle some personal animosity. Once a young man trying to snatch the flag—thus claiming victory and bring a conclusion to the fair—fell into the river and died.   

Maybe that’s how the muscular metaphors and ever-enduring myths take shape—sometimes brightly buoyant, sometimes perversely proud, sometimes mystically magical.