Puppets on a broken string
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If the many puppets lying around in the home of the Kanitkars in Pune had a life of their own, there would have been tears rolling down their cheeks. That’s because the one who drove them into motion with the strings firmly wound around his fingers is no more.
Hemant Kanitkar, 55, was a well-known puppeteer who had
He succumbed to throat cancer just four days before the beginning of a new year on December 27. “Ever since the cancer had been detected in April last year, the therapy had cured it up to almost 80%. He would have pulled through had it not been for the lung infection,” says his wife Ranjana. A passionate puppeteer For Hemant, his work was his passion, to the extent that even if Pune was his home, the villages and the small towns was where he preferred to spend his time. “He was in love with a nomadic lifestyle and there was nothing better he liked to do than to spend hours with the villagers to understand their issues and then to devise entertaining skits at the core of which lay a strong message,” his wife Ranjana recalls. The use of puppets was a novel idea because it was seen as a form of entertainment and helped establish an instant connection with the audience. “There is no way you can lecture a villager on what is right and wrong and then expect him to be a changed man overnight. But what the puppets say and do is something that has a subtle but lasting effect,” is what he had to say during a show he had organised in Aurangabad a few years ago. Connecting with people Puppetry has always had a strong presence in the rural entertainment sector, perhaps just a notch below folk theatre. Unfortunately, however, it's perceived as a “comic act for kids”. This was something that Hemant and Ranjana had been persistently trying to change. “We tackled sensitive issues relating to communal divides, tribal atrocities, exploitation of women, addictions to drugs and liquor, infanticide and child education by using puppets. But care had to be taken to ensure that every performance had dollops of humour, sometimes even at crass levels,” Ranjana states. Elaborating on the importance and relevance of puppetry today, Ranjana says that unlike other forms of media that aim to communicate but end up either being one-sided or as a mode of preaching, puppetry is very easily identified by the villagers who see in this “unadulerated fun”, more so because of its quality of being extempore. “Puppetry instantly helps establish a dialogue. We have found villagers talking to the puppets, forgetting the fact that they are mere dolls being manipulated through strings,” Ranjana points out. The beginnings Hemant's skill with puppets was a gift from his father Vasant Kanitkar who learnt it from an American lady invited by the Indian government during the mid-'70s to conduct puppet workshops in schools. “I started experimenting with puppets only as an extension of my love for theatre,” Hemant had stated. He then studied at the National School of Drama under the tutelage of renowned theatre personalities like Ebrahim Alkazi, Sivaram Karanth and Meher Contractor. Working as a freelance artiste till 1979, Hemant took to full-time puppetry only after he received a fellowship to examine how puppets could be used to educate the rural poor. Around this time, Hemant met Ranjana who was an activist propagating the ideology of political leader Jayaprakash Narayan. “We got married and decided to set up the People's Universal Popular Puppetry Educational Theatre (PUPPET) as a forum to explore the relationship between this folk medium and social issues,” she informs. As one thing led to another, the Kanitkars began using puppetry as therapy for spastics. One project involved the psychological rehabilitation of disabled soldiers by providing them the necessary training to make and use puppets, both for their creative satisfaction and as an income-generating opportunity. Making puppetry popular Supported by organisations such as the Ford Foundation, the department of handicrafts and the department of science and technology, Hemant and Ranjana began to “decentralise the process” by training puppeteers in other parts of the country. “Since we could not speak all the languages, we started networking with committed artistes in other parts of the country to teach them the skills,” explains Ranjana. Currently, there are more than 80 independent puppet groups in the state of Maharashtra performing at the local level, and about 40 national-level groups working on a broader platform. Traditional puppetry, as used by the Kanitkars, has always been a touch-and-go affair that guarantees no stability or financial support. “It is not possible to make puppetry a professional occupation. Most artistes who have continued practising traditional puppetry do so along with an alternative profession. They do it because it gives them joy and creative satisfaction,” Ranjana states. But things weren’t so smooth sailing all the time. Hemant once recalled how they had been stoned in a village in Rajasthan for daring to use puppets to decry the tradition of child marriage. “Even if the element of tongue-in-cheek humour softens the direct impact of the statement we are trying to make, there are times when certain limits cannot be crossed. Sarcasm is often misconstrued as arrogance,” he had then said. Taking the legacy forward Meanwhile, the passing away of Hemant Kanitkar has only doubled the responsibility of his wife. “The work that we had done together for so many years will continue. My son Yogendra, who is presently studying environmental engineering, has shown an interest in carrying his father’s legacy forward. Also, it was Hemant’s dream to set up a school for puppetry. There is no institute in Asia that teaches puppetry on a formal level. Maybe we will realise this dream project,” Ranjana hopes. Interestingly, the biggest headache for Hemant was to ward off politicians who wished to use them for campaigning during elections. The Kanitkars’ commitment was to education and creating awareness. “Political lobbying, even if the monetary stakes are high, cannot ever be a part of our agenda,” Hemant had said during an interview done a few years ago. After all, puppets, for Hemant, were not mere dolls at the end of strings. They were the harbingers of change. |
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