Mithila Culture

Sitamarhi sits inside Mithila, and the culture of the district is the culture of the region. The painting that the world now calls Madhubani was made here on house walls for weddings and rituals: the kohbar on the nuptial wall, fish and lotus and bamboo for plenty, the sun and moon at the edges. It moved onto paper in the years after the drought of the late 1960s, and the line — double outline, no blank space — has stayed the same.

Sujni is the other handcraft: a quilt stitched from old cloth and then embroidered, made for the marriage of a daughter and kept for a lifetime. Jat-Jatin, the duet of the two lovers, is sung at the weddings, and the Ramlila of the season is played out in the towns.

The language of all of it is Maithili, written in Devanagari, and the food is the plain Mithila plate — rice, dal, seasonal vegetables, the mango and the lychee of the summer.