Shadow speaks!

 Today I happened to attend an event where a SHADOW PUPPET team performed a story which I loved a lot and would like to share with you guys Let me just tell you the plot, shall I?

The story begins with an amazing cloud who travels everywhere on search of people's stories. One day, he asks his bird friend ," Do you know someone with a story?" He answered that, he knows a whale from the ocean nearby. So he goes to the ocean and searches for this whale. After a while, he found him and asks him about his story. And the whale began, "I am someone who loves to swim around but sadly have this Nemo memory. So I usually tend to get lost while swimming and forget my help sign" ( the noise whales make during danger). And he goes on with how the aquatic beings react roughly to something which loved and a specification of a turtle which tells that "the kids these days are spoiled".

Then the whale suggests to meet an elephant in the forest. When the cloud enquires on how he will find the specific one among the many other elephants. The whale says, "You will know it once you reach there".

According to the whale's advise, the cloud moves to the forest and meets an herd of elephant but one among was multicolored. The cloud went and spoke to the elephant about how different he is and asked about his story. The elephant told, " I was born multicolored and people see me differently and don't accompany me for this. So I changed my skin colour into black by shaking all the fruits of a jamun tree all over myself but I still couldn't talk to anyone. I didn't want anyone to find out who I am and I don't wanted them to ignore me again. But later on I realised that I lost myself while trying to fit in and started being myself even though some ignore me as usual."

After some conversation, the elephant tells the cloud to go meet a bird who lives in the city.

Finally the cloud reaches the city and meets a crow. The crow is someone who has been there in the city for years and who deeply laments by telling," Once there were a lot of foreign birds migrating season to season and this place happened to be a habitat for them and us. But they destructed the nature in the name of industrial development, many suffer due to this." Then they have a discussion on the environment and its importance.

And the story ends.

It wasn't blunt like how I told ya. There were songs in between, interactions with the audience and the usage of words were awesome!

The reasons why I liked it was the characterisation and letting the shadows play. From choosing a cloud who travels around and hears stories, wow! because clouds goes everywhere.Then portraying the whale which are commonly considered to be big and gigantic can have Nemo's memory. Then the dialogue of a turtle which profiles to be the old and wise ones depicting the stereotypical society. Always racism happens to someone who's black but making the elephant face racism for being colourful was the wonderful part. Finally, the crow which everyone forgets who are everywhere, they are in the cities, villages, forests, graveyards, I mean literally every place so they know about the world and the environment. Making them talk about the nature was 🫠🫶

So it is the detailings and characterization which made me fall in love. And this post is a gratitude for the shadow puppet team who gave this wonderful experience for me. Hats off to the team for this great script and the mind blowing performance.🫡