World Puppetry Day: Tradition on a string, some thrive, others barely survive

New Delhi: The swank venues that stage puppetry festivals are a far cry from the congested streets of west Delhi’s Kathputhli transit camp, the yawning gap highlighting the successes of those who evolved with the times and the plight of those who couldn’t.

Holding on to hope as tightly as they grip the strings that control their marionettes, many of those unable to keep pace with changing and younger audiences have moved on to other jobs for sheer survival.

Some communities, including in West Bengal, Odisha and in Delhi, are struggling due to lack of state support and patronage and simply because they could not upgrade their skills in keeping with the times, experts said on World Puppet Day on Tuesday.

“Audiences have changed and become more demanding but it is something that should be taken as a cue to upgrade their skills,” veteran puppeteer Dadi Pudumjee told PTI.

Believed to be more than 3,000 years old, puppetry across India is performed in 18 different traditions, including ‘Chamadyache Bahulya’ (leather puppets) of Maharashtra, ‘Beni Putul’ (glove puppets) of West Bengal, ‘Tholu Bommalata’ (shadow puppets) of Andhra Pradesh, ‘Tholpavakoothu’ (shadow puppetry) of Kerala and the traditional ‘Kathputli’ of Rajasthan.

The rich and diverse puppetry culture across the wide dimensions of India is, by and large, thriving, Pudumjee said.

On the flip side is Ramesh Bhatt, a puppeteer at the Kathputli Colony in Delhi’s Anand Parbat locality.

“A lot of us have started playing dhol at wedding ceremonies and some have become vegetable vendors to be able to survive. There is no work for us, no support from the government and no audience. We are invited at events maybe once or twice a year, but that isn’t enough,” Bhatt told PTI.

He is among the hundreds of puppeteers who were evicted from Kathputli Colony in 2017 and have struggled to find work in their generational occupation.

Kathputli Colony was a slum cluster and residents of the locality were mainly artists, including puppeteers, acrobats, folk musicians, magicians, and dancers. More than 2,800 families were rehabilitated to transit camps.

According to Pudumjee, traditional puppeteers exposed to festivals and workshops have managed to do better by adapting to newer materials and techniques.

“...If there is a good production, the audience is there,” the celebrated puppeteer said.

“You have individuals in Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan, Bengal who are doing well in the traditional form and have adapted to better, newer techniques, newer material, making puppets and manipulating them,” he added.

Educating younger generations has also been good for the craft. People are not only staying with puppetry but also putting their learned knowledge and experience to good use.

“A lot of them have now gone to schools and colleges, they have done extremely well and are also bringing their learning and experience into the technical qualities of their performances... in making the puppets, ideas, production and techniques,” Pudumjee added.

In the south, puppeteers find sponsorship through families, temples and institutes, a tradition that is now lost in the north, he said.

Treating the diverse puppetry traditions like one monolithic block and saying “puppetry is dead” is wrong, said veteran puppeteer Anurupa Roy.

“Shadow puppeteers in Kerala have dedicated space in temple performance. They have work and land. They are thriving. Chitrakathi puppetry in Maharashtra is thriving. Puppeteers from Hassan in Karnataka are thriving. And then you look at Odisha and the puppeteers are really poverty stricken... If you look at some of the puppet families after Amphan hit West Bengal, they had to give up puppetry and had to move away,” Anurupa noted.

She added that these are two stories and two circumstances.

“So putting everything as one monolithic block is dangerous.” Renowned puppeteer Puran Bhatt, also a resident of the Kathputli transit camp, said the problem is not with some of the more prominent puppeteers, who have the means and connections to stay afloat, but others left without a platform to perform and earn a living.

“Where can they go? They can’t sit around the whole year, waiting for somebody to come and hire them for one show. There is simply nobody to look after us. People have turned to selling vegetables and just getting by, even then they have introduced their next generations to puppetry,” Puran said.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi winner stays with his family in a one-room lodging at the camp.

He noted that the only way to help not just puppeteers but other artistes is to establish some sort of a platform where they can perform for tourists and visitors and earn a fixed wage.

“The government has to do something about us. There is no other way,” Puran said firmly.