Kathputli is a string puppet theatre, native to Rajasthan, India, and is the most popular form of Indian puppetry. Although there is no written record of this, it is said this craftof Rajasthan is more than a thousand years old. Kathputli is a combination of two Rajasthani words (Kath meaning wood and Putli meaning doll). Rajasthani puppets have their own unique specialty. Puppeteers manipulate the puppets with a whistling, squeaking voice and are interpreted by a narrator who also provides the rhythm. A slight jerk of the string causes the puppets to produce movements of the hands, neck and shoulder.…
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Originally, Mahabaleshwar was created as a summer capital so that British sahibs and memsahibs, stationed in the Bombay Presidency, could escape the heat of the Indian summer. Now, except for the monsoons when some hotels down their shutters, Mahabaleshwar is a round-the-year holiday destination. In fact, it is something that you are expected to do over a weekend. At the beginning of January this year, we took a short break and drove off to Mahabaleshwar. We decided that we were not going to drive around from one ‘point’, as the various peaks are called, to another. Instead we were going…
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I first visited Kerala (a State in South India) in the early nineties, much before the Keralites discovered that they lived in God’s Own Country. And having discovered God’s Own Country, on my own, I have kept returning. Again and again. But my enchantment with the natural beauty of Kerala blinkered me and I gave the cultural aspects of the place and its people a miss. As a result, I missed out on Kalaripayattu, a martial art form indigenous to Kerala. In Malayalam, the word ‘kalari‘ means a practice ring or a training centre and ‘payattu‘ means duel. Although I…