Very few know that Odisha is one of the rare states which has all the four types of puppetry flourishing, Rod puppetry being one of them. However, the age-old art has been struggling to find audience. And thus, comes the octogenarian Maguni Charan Kunwar who is leaving no stone unturned in breathing a new lease of life to this dying art of puppetry
CHAITALI SHOME, OP
Bhubaneswar: India was once synonymous with ‘Home of Puppets’, but the art has a few admirers now.
And thus comes Maguni Charan Kunwar, a man in his 80’s who is leaving no stone unturned in breathing a new lease of life to this age-old art of puppetry.
Very few know that Odisha is one of the rarest states which have all the four types of puppetry flourishing and fewer know that the earliest reference to the art of puppetry can be traced to Tamil classic ‘Silappadikaaram’ which was written around 1st or 2nd century BC.
The octogenarian Kunwar is a veteran in rod puppetry, where wooden puppets are hoisted up on stage with a metal rod attached to their body and covered by their flowing attires.
A prodigious student of the legendary puppeteer Makardhwaja Behera, Kunwar has been performing since he was 27 but even today he does not fail to bamboozle the audience with his dexterity. The fact that when Kunwar was 71, he received an invitation from Central Cultural Akademi to open a Gurukul for aspiring puppeteers, testifies to his skilful hands which have not lost their sheen even in his declining years.
Under Makardhwaja Behera’s tutelage for a few months, Kunwar learnt the ropes of ‘Kathi Kandhei Naacha’. He believed that the art is more about improvisation and not a run-of-the-mill job. “You may keep learning it for years but you need to have that zing in you to excel,” he said.
Earlier, Kunwar was with ‘Ramleela’, a dance troupe, but as he said, “I was a square peg in a round hole there,” therefore he quit dancing and with a leap of faith advanced his steps to puppetry.
“My Guru used to buy me puppets for his shows,” he chuckled. In 1955, after he came in terms with himself, he “mustered up all his courage” and embarked on his venture, forming ‘Utkal Biswakarma Kalakunja’. At first, there were six members in the troupe and as the years advanced, musicians from different states joined in. “Presently, I have ten members,” he said. Till date, Kunwar has staged more than eighty national and international shows.
The winner of several awards and accolades, including the Odisha Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1983, Kunwar also bagged the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2004.
His shows deal with various subjects and spread across multiple genres but the veteran never shy off to add a tinge of humour in all his plays as he pointed out, “This is what the audience loves.” His troupe does not outsource anyone for its backstage work, from the page to the stage, everything is created by the members. “We compose our music and script the stories of our shows,” he added.
Kunwar who never refrained from claiming himself as the “only living rod puppeteer in the Asian continent”, lamented that the art, which has mystified the audiences in the past, has been neglected time and again by the administration.
“As modernity descended, it brought technological forms of entertainment with itself and thus the traditional forms of entertainment took the back seats,” Kunwar rued.
Kunwar is pained that his children do not want to learn the art that he has mastered. “I am old now. Recently, I had an accident and couldn’t move much. So, I have started farming in my three-acre land,” he said, adding, “I did my part for the dying art but regret that I couldn’t find a saviour for it.”