I finished the reedit of the longer performance by Sadar sahib’s group, and I have to say it is much better and went from 18 minutes to about 11. I went to meet Sadar, and we took off to the area where there had been a death in the family a couple of days before. This community is also in Multan, just a bit further out.We got there and met several puppeteers. Mostly they really were not good. This was supposed to be the day when I would see the master puppet maker’s work. The puppeteers and their families certainly do talk themselves up. Specific puppeteers really are good, but all that talk gets very exhausting.
After recording several people, I really wasn’t feeling it. Two of the “puppeteers” were literally just pulling the strings and clearly were not skilled. This really annoyed me. The puppet maker, as I was already aware was in Karachi, but we visited his home. I saw two in progress head sculpts made of wood, that were quite nice, but apparently his collection was with him. These puppet sets are their treasure. They don’t sell them. These are for performances, and this is their heritage and livelihood. I did see more puppets that made it clear that they were not all hand me downs and that there were indeed puppets that had been created in the last couple of decades at least, but there is a severe lack of puppet making going on and of this group there is only one that actually continues that part of this beautiful art.After another day, where there was little quality and I felt like I was handing out money for nothing, I got annoyed. I told them that these were not proper performers. I did not wish to waste time and money on people who were not able to perform. If I did not want to be inundated by everyone looking to get paid to pull a few strings, I knew I needed to put my foot down and I did. This was it. The last day to see puppeteers before I head out to see others in Sindh. I explained how showing substandard puppeteers, even for a directory of puppeteers would not help to promote them and their art. There were several people that I was supposed to meet, but there was more talk and little sign of the actual work. I was very tired of this and let them know.We ended up heading back to Sadar sahib’s neighborhood with a senior puppeteer from the area we had come to visit as his puppets were there. He showcased a few nice pieces that I recorded and we called it a day. It’s challenging, but important to push back on stuff, otherwise you’ll be inundated by crap. Anyone becomes a puppeteer when there is some money to be made, but thanks to the recordings, I can select the ones that are best.I went back to the guest house exhausted and a bit dejected, but at least I felt like I had found some good puppeteers amongst the batch. Now on to the next mountain of tasks. I began making arrangements for my next stop.