Of the hands that hold the puppet strings

Bhimavva's husband Doddabalappa also came from a family with a tradition of puppetry. After marriage, they travelled together from one village to another, performing puppet shows.

She is 96 years old. But when her son Keshappa picks up a harmonium and begins singing an episode from the Mahabharata, her ears perk up, her eyes brighten, and her hands involuntarily begin to move. 

She begins singing, “Bheemasena, heege malagi bittare hegappa, ninagagi ninna sahodararu bagilalli kaydu ninthiddare” (“Bhimasena, how can you sleep like this when your brothers are waiting for you at the door”), while her hands begin gracefully, moving some colourful leather puppets in sync. 

Meet Bhimavva, the charismatic leather puppetry artist who bagged the Padma Shri award recently. Bhimavva has had a life of many hardships. She spent most of her life in a hut and could afford only the humble ‘ambli’, but her passion for leather puppetry has been unmatched.

Bhimavva got into puppetry at the age of five. Though illiterate, she learned to sing and narrate mythological stories following her father’s tunes. Taking over the art from her elders, even as a child, she could sing the 18 parvas (chapters) of the Mahabharata. She could narrate stories for an entire day without tiring, her voice never faltering, the stories never-ending.

“Back then, there were no buses, and we had to travel miles on foot, performing puppetry shows in various villages. We lived in huts and would go from one village to another, making our puppets dance. We would perform all night. It would take months before we would return home,” says Bhimavva, reminiscing about her childhood.

Her husband Doddabalappa also came from a family with a tradition of puppetry. After marriage, they travelled together from one village to another, performing puppet shows.

Today, she has 12 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren from her six children. They all continue the tradition of performing puppet shows based on mythological stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

“At times, we would perform until dawn but return empty-handed. We would walk through villages with our children strapped to our backs, in our arms and on our shoulders. Later, someone donated a cow to us. We spread a cloth with two side pockets on the cow’s back and made our children sit in it. Despite the hardships — wind, rain, heat, cold, hunger, pain and exhaustion — life kept us going,” she recalls.

“Once, when we were travelling through a town, we asked avva (mother) to buy tender coconut water for us. As she had no money to buy it, she got some discarded coconuts and gave us the tender coconut from it,” says her son Keshappa, even as tears fill Bhimavva’s eyes. 

Braving all these odds, Bhimavva found solace in puppetry. “Once our show begins, we forget the pain of our life. It is like we are living the lives of the characters in the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The gods are with us,” she says, expressing the joy that has filled her life.

After her husband’s death, the responsibility of keeping puppetry alive fell solely on Bhimavva. Even then, her only possessions were a hut, a set of leather puppets, a harmonium, a dholak and a tabla. She taught the songs and stories she knew to her children, and began taking them along with her for puppet shows.

Some villages believed that Bhimavva’s performance had the power to bring rain. So, after the show, the villagers would offer her food and grains. 

In 2008, heavy rain and strong wind blew away Bhimavva’s hut. “The hut was swept away, along with my clothes and food, but what hurt me most was that many of my dolls were ruined,” she says. 

Fortunately, four years ago, she managed to build a small house where the tradition of leather puppetry is thriving.

(Translated from Kannada by Divyashri Mudakavi)