Wearing white face paint and a stripy top, mime artist Minangka Deka faces the camera on Guwahati streets and also in his home-made studio to pass messages on coronavirus awareness.
The 26-year-old mass communication graduate has been entertaining people with his mime act for years, but coronavirus lockdown has shut down regular performances.
So he has been acting in front of the camera and reaching out to his audience via YouTube and other social media platforms and spreading various kinds of awareness messages.
"Mime is much beyond than the peripheries of entertainment," says the young mime artist during a candid chit-chat.
"Being a strong visual medium, messages expressed through mime leave a long-lasting impact," he further adds.
The first mime act to spread coronavirus awareness was uploaded on YouTube on March 19- five days before the nationwide lockdown began.
By then the world was aware of the safety protocols one need to follow to save oneself from coronavirus infection.
Apart from him, others who acted in the video included Bhavana Barman, Bhargab Jyoti Sarma, Riki Choudhury, Kushal Nath, and Shyamontika Dutta.
In this video, he expressed the importance of maintaining social distancing.
The video was well-received by the audience and his friends and family encouraged him to shoot more videos in the future.
"I had planned a series of videos, however, due to the lockdown the plan had to be rescheduled and instead of going outdoors, I decided to go solo and shoot the videos indoors," Minangka further says.
And since then he has shot a number of videos in which he showed the importance of handwashing, and also a message to not spit randomly on the streets.
In one of the videos, he also showed that even in this digital world the joy of reading a newspaper in the morning is inexplicable and that coronavirus doesn't spread via it.
"People were wrongly informed that newspapers are the carriers of coronavirus and due to this, newspaper distribution was stopped for a few days," he says.
"Through this video titles Aamez, I tried to break this myth and also bring forth the delight of reading a newspaper in the morning," he quips in.
Like his previous videos, this video also received well by the audience.
This is not for the first time that this young artist has been vocal about an issue via the medium of mime.
Last year he did a special "mime-shoot", in which he urged the picnickers to behave responsibly while going for a picnic.
Mime artist Minangka Deka creating awareness on a picnic
Apart from it, he has also been a part of a campaign called 'Save Deepor Bil' which was launched to generate awareness on Deepor Beel- the only Ramsar Site of Assam.
Minangka's tryst with the mime began when he was in Class VIII with a sweet accident.
"The regular teacher of some class had not come one day and our English teacher came as a proxy and asked us to perform whatever we could," Minangka says while recalling his first performance day.
"When my turn came, I performed mime and it was appreciated by everyone," he says.
"Till then I had no formal training, but the appreciation made me confident and I decided to go for formal training," he adds on further.
And since then there has been no looking back and today Minangka Deka is a known face in the mime circuit of the country.
With an aim to make mime a household name, the young artist from Assam says he has several miles to cover still and this is just the beginning of a long journey.
Partha Prawal (Goswami) is a Guwahati-based journalist who loves to write about entertainment, sports, and social and civic issues among others. He is also a published author.
