Bhubaneswar: In view of prevailing conditions amid COVID-19 outbreak, Odisha State Tribal Museum authorities have decided to launch virtual tour of Bhubaneswar based Gond House every Sunday.
This virtual tour will enable the audience to visualise exclusive tribal artefacts and unique aspects of the museum while being at the safety of home.
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According to officials, one can visit the Facebook and Twitter pages @scstrti, @stscdev for a virtual tour every Sunday.
The tribal museum’s virtual visitors can take a tour of the Gond House at Bhubaneswar.
A single room dwelling, the Bhubaneswar Gond House is covered with verandahs on three sides while the walls are brightly painted with traditional Gond art. One part of the covered verandah contains family hearth, while the other part is used to store fishing equipment. Within the main living space, raised wooden platforms have been made to place grain bags, the museum official sources informed.
Apart from the Gond House, one can also take a look at traditional Gond paintings during the tour.
Notably, Gond tribals have a long tradition of wall and floor paintings which has become an income-generating art form for the community in recent years.
Gonds are numerically one of the largest tribal groups in India. They are called as Gond or Koitur. Culturally, the tribe is dichotomised into the primitive group and the acculturated into Hindu religion.
In Odisha, Gond tribals mostly live in Nabarangpur, Nuapada, Bolangir and Kalahandi districts and speak Gondi (Dravidian) and Odia (Indo-Aryan) dialects. Their main occupations are cultivation and manual labour.
PNN