I am going with Linda this morning to experience an Indian Ladies Hair Salon. Linda had told Jose, the marina manager, that she needed to find someplace to get her hair cut and I made some kind of noise about my hair so we both have appointments this morning at the same salon his wife uses. I’m not getting mine cut, both Randal and my friend Bruce voted to keep it growing; but maybe they have some special conditioner that makes the Indian women’s hair so shiny. We’ll see.

Ru

Puppet Show

Thanks to my friend Martha who was THE Children’s Librarian at the Roanoke County Public Library for many years, I have come to appreciate puppets and the different stories created around them around the world. So I told Sandeep I wanted to see a puppet show. Amazingly there was one at the Pink Palace and it was free (though I did give them a good tip.) Just before it started a young tourist spied the drums and couldn’t resist a chance to play. But since he didn’t know the puppet show music they made him give it back.

“Puppetry, which is a real challenge to the imagination and the creative ability of the individual, is one of the most ancient forms of entertainment. Besides entertainment, puppetry serves as an applied art, conveying meaningful messages. Of all art forms, it is probably the least restricted in form, design, colour and movement. It is also the least expensive of all animated visual art forms.” http://www.puppetryindia.org/

The man in the black shirt was the puppet-master.

When the music started, these were no longer cloth and papier-mâché, but real actors!

She went spinning around like a dervish! and it was over way too soon.

In our early days in Cochin I had seen beautiful puppets sold along the streets and knew I just had to get one for Martha and her daughter Jess. The day Linda and I went shopping, I think I must have looked at dozens of the double-headed puppets until I finally found one that was perfect enough for a gift. Linda bought two and I bought one and she negotiated a great deal for us. (We saved at least $1 per puppet and in the spirit of the deal that was quite good.)

The “male puppet”

Turn it upside down and it becomes the “female puppet”

A trick of the camera, same puppet but the smile is really different

I read that the puppets often have no legs so the movement is less restricted and watching the puppet show I could understand why.