8 months ago
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For Lalitha Prasad, 70, Dasara is not conscionable a festival to show dolls, but an juncture to marque dolls herself. Over the past 15 years, she has handcrafted much than 1,500 dolls connected implicit 20 antithetic themes, ranging from Yoga and Surya Namaskara to depictions of women critics, matrimony ceremonies, mythology, and history.
Her cotton-stuffed dolls person hand-stitched costumes and jewellery, including infinitesimal details similar earrings and bindi. Ms. Prasad makes caller dolls each twelvemonth and painstakingly arranges them astatine her location successful Bengaluru. Though she has received offers to show her dolls some extracurricular the State and the country, she has turned them down and continues to show them lone astatine her location during the Navaratri festival.
Not conscionable making caller dolls and displaying them, but preserving them for years is besides a cardinal task that requires a batch of enactment arsenic the dolls person to beryllium restitched and repacked aft the celebrations are over.
Ms. Prasad’s girl Rashmi Manohar said that making these dolls was her mother’s large passion. “She talks to her dolls, she sings for them. She sees them not arsenic objects, but arsenic carriers of stories and traditions. The main crushed she puts this overmuch effort successful making the dolls is to marque definite aboriginal generations recognize what Dasara dolls, known arsenic Pattada Gombe, genuinely signify, and the bequest that they carry,” Ms. Manohar said.
Despite wellness and age-related challenges, including recurring backmost and enarthrosis pain, Ms. Prasad continues to nurture her craft. Her girl admits that the household has requested her to dilatory down, but her dedication remains constant. “For her, this is not conscionable an creation form, but a mode of keeping civilization that fosters creativity and assemblage tone alive,” Ms. Manohar said.
