51 year old string and rod puppeteer, Amarendra Nath Naskar of South 24 Parganas, began his training as a child of barely five years, under the guidance of his father, a master string puppeteer and idol maker. Under the encouragement and tutelage of his paternal grandfather, he also began to learn the wide variety of songs that are sung for the performances.
He was in his early teens, when the financial circumstances of his family forced him to drop out of school. A keen learner, Amar began focussing on honing his skills, making and maneouvering string puppets (Taarer putul) as well as singing. He also began to assist his father in clay idol making, a traditional family occupation.
He had his first opportunity to perform publicly in 1994, when both he and his father were invited to perform at a Sangeet Natak Akademi programme in Guwahati, thanks to a recommendation from the internationally renowned puppeteer, Padmashree Suresh Dutta. The next milestone in his life occurred the same year when he and his father were invited to participate in the Jelepara Kaibarta Samity seminar on Putul Naach. It was here that he met the master puppeteer and pioneer of modern Indian puppetry, the late Raghunath Goswami who accepted him as his shishya. Amarendra trained under him for a year, learning newer techniques, until the master`s death in 1995. Amarendra also learnt the crafts of glove and shadow puppetry from him. Amarendra occasionally assists Swapna Sen, a close associate of Goswamy.
Other than making puppets, Amarendra, has also been carving votive wooden sculptures, since he was 20 or so. He uses the more expensive neem or bel wood as his medium. For the past few years, he has also been receiving assignments to design and decorate small local temples with idols made from POP or cement. Since puppetry does not fetch him enough, he is devoting more and more time to such orders.
Amarendra has taught his son puppetry, but says that the youth of his village have not shown any particular interest in this art. The members of his group are men from neighbouring villages who are passionate about puppetry and he has focussed on improving their skills on the various aspects of a puppetry performance, including music, sound and lighting. Whenever a bigger team is required, his family members lend a hand. With a repertoire of 40 productions, the themes of his group`s performances, are based on myths or are of historical or social relevance. Some are imaginary tales too.
The future of puppetry is bleak, Amarendra laments. Their performances, each of about 2 hours duration, mainly around the puja season, had dropped to 50 or 60 a year, before the Covid pandemic. Performances had completely stopped for three years and have only recently started picking up again - but no more than 20 or 25 annually. The money earned is not sufficient to sustain the entire group. Programmes offered by the state government, which pay more, unfortunately benefit only artisan card holders. Till date, neither Amarendra nor his father have been able to obtain the government artisan card required for such assignments. They are fobbed off with excuses - and as an artist, he finds the whole process extremely demeaning, particularly when artisans of lesser skill and experience have managed to acquire such cards. He feels fortunate that he has a bit of cultivable land that provides for the needs of his family.
Never one to lose hope though, Amarendra is planning on a brand new puppet production.
For more on Taarer Putul, read
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