In order to come here, you should first go through one of two NGOs that work in this community: SARTHI or Kalakar Trust.
But the fact that these NGOs are bitter rivals means that outsiders will inevitably only get a partial view.
I first came here in 1999 as a fellow puppeteer, a kathputliwala.
When I returned ten years later with a camera and microphone, the stakes were higher. Folks knew I was there to help document what was doomed for destruction, but a white man holding a camera is a loaded optic.
Then, one day, I casually mentioned that my grandfather, as a widower, had remarried a lively Indian editor from Lucknow, Doris Franklin,
making her my beloved Chotu Nani [Little Grandma]…
…and there was a shift in how the kalakars related to me.
Regardless of how many times I emphasized the ‘step’ in ‘step grandmother’ they would say ‘His grandmother was from Lucknow’.
It opened doors, so I just went with it.
The kalakars will meet you eyeball to eyeball.
They will read you like a book and gleefully tease you about your ignorance of this place.
Then they'll say the same things they just told the last wide-eyed outsider…
…as puppeteer Puran Bhat says: