Keeping Tradition Alive: Joonbeel Mela, Where Trade Takes Place Through Barter, Draws Huge Crowd Amid Covid
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For Indrani, a corporate professional from Guwahati, it was not only a pre-dawn sixty-kilometre drive from the Assam capital but a rare opportunity to break through the shackles of the busy city life and acquaint herself with a traditional trade that exist only in this part of the country. I brought my mother and elder sister along. This is the first time that I have come to the Joonbeel Mela. I brought a good amount of homemade ‘teel pitha’ (local sweet delicacy) which I exchanged with wild turmeric and ginger and a local folding knife with the indigenous people. It’s crazy that in this age of crypto money I could literally buy things without any currency, says Indrani.