Sixty-six-year-old Parshuram Atmaram Gangavane remembers his earliest Chitrakathi performances at the temples of the village of Pinguli in the Kudal taluka of Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district. Back then, he says, the same sheets of paintings were used for all performances, after which they were stowed away. Nearly 40 years ago, he thought of making new paintings, in an effort to make visible an art form that has been in his family for generations. His Padma Shri this week is a culmination of all those years of dedication to the craft. “I feel ecstatic that the art that generations of my family have kept alive has been recognised in this way,” Gangavane, who is presently in Delhi to receive the award, tells mid-day. “I began with an ambition and had I not, I wouldn’t have been able to introduce so many others to it today. People in my village too now realise the importance of keeping it alive.”

The word Chitrakathi combines ‘chitra’ meaning painting and ‘kathi’, meaning story, the art form practised by members of the Thakar tribal community who were itinerant storytellers. A narrator would relate in Marathi episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata with the help of stylised paintings or shadow or stringed puppets and folk songs, and was accompanied by three instruments, which were the veena, the taal (a pair of clash cymbals) and the huduk—a two-headed small drum, similar to the damru. It is said that many of the original performers of the form were spies operating during the reign of the Maratha kings who were tasked with extracting information as they travelled through villages.