A slice of rural India which is facing oblivion will be brought alive through a weeklong exhibition of photographs by award-winning lensman Bijoy Chowdhury at the Art Gallery of India International Centre, New Delhi from January 24.

Polymorphic or Bohurupi (as it is called in local parlance in West Bengal), in which the humans transform themselves to look like gods and then go about collecting money from awe-struck masses, had been a practice in rural West Bengal as entertainment as well as means of survival.

Bohurupis are facing extinction now. But still in rural belts, some people are pursuing this art simply for the love of it. Like Kalipada Pal, a resident of Jyotsambhu village in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, who has shown that devotion can keep alive a dying art even at the age of home entertainment and multiplexes.
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