 "Sahapedia wants to be the Wikipedia for Indian culture")
When the season arrives, K Ramaswamy Pulavar's troupe performs in goddess Bhadrakali's temples in northern Kerala even when there's no one to watch their show. "This is our duty," says Pulavar, a practitioner of the age-old art form Tolpavakoothu, or shadow puppet theatre.
Tolpavakoothu uses leather puppets to form shadow figures that rise and fall on a screen lit by 21 lamps as they enact stories based on the Kamba Ramayana. Once a thriving art form, today there aren't many who are willing to learn and preserve the tradition, says Pulavar, in Malayalam.
He is one of the many experts interviewed by an online portal called Sahapedia to document Tolpavakoothu, and an English transcript of his video-taped conversation helps even non-Malayalam speakers grasp the essentials of the age-old art form.
Overcoming barriers of geography and language is just a tiny part of what Sahapedia attempts to do, and Sudha Gopalakrishnan knows that her team has taken on a mammoth task by aiming to build a comprehensive archive of India's cultural heritage. "We've been ideating on Sahapedia for the past five years and trying to put together resources for this. The challenge in front of us is absolutely mind-boggling," says Gopalakrishnan, the executive director of Sahapedia.
Gopalakrishnan was previously known for her work as the founder-director of India's National Mission for Manuscripts (2003-07) which placed valuable Indian manuscripts in the public domain (Namami.org).
Launched in late April and led by former TCS vice-chairman and the present head of the National Skill Development Agency, S Ramadorai, this portal is steadily evolving as a museum of Indian culture.
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Even as it takes off, Sahapedia has put up an assortment of curated, multimedia content. While one part of Sahapedia gives you access to posters and film stills from Satyajit Ray's work, another module by Mumbai-based Gautam Pemmaraju focuses on 'Sufis, Sants and Songs of the Deccan.'
Giving an insight into how profound and interconnected Hindu-Muslim philosophies were, Pemmaraju's essay begins with the words written by king Ibrahim Adil Shah II: Bhaka nyari nyari bhava ek, Kaha turuk kaha barahaman (Languages are so many, emotion is the same, whether a Turk or a Brahmin.)
This is also the place to get introduced to Sufi literature in North India, as well as catching political cartoonist EP Unny in action as he makes a sketch for the day.
"Saha" is Sanskrit for "together with", and "pedia" comes from encyclopaedia. Sahapedia invites institutions as well as individuals to register online in order to share resources. "The whole point is to have as many people as possible on board with us; after all, there's so much to cover," says Gopalakrishnan, the Delhi-based exponent of the classical Sanskrit theatre form, Koodiyattam.
A major benefit of using Sahapedia is that one has access to primary research, believes Mushtak Khan, the former deputy director of Delhi's Crafts Museum. "I've worked in the field of textiles for almost 30 years and have published some amount of work on it. But what about what's happening with ajrakh (a legendary, printed textile) now? If this knowledge is not constantly updated, it'll pass away with people like me," states Khan, who has contributed to Sahapedia's section on textiles.
Demon mask, Purulia Chhau, from the module on Chhau traditions
Another perk of a platform like this, says Khan, is having good access to credible resources. "If you want to explore the world of Banarasi sarees, not everyone can reach Shahjahan Ansari. Ansari is someone who comes from a long line of weavers, but you can't really expect him to write a book on it," shares Khan. But when the skill of an expert comes together with the knowledge of a craftsperson, nothing comes close to it, believes Khan.
Sahapedia is based on a Wikipedia-like model where anyone can contribute, but it differs by being more specific to everything Indian, and having all the information vetted by experts.
Though Google's art project is also working in a similar field, it focuses primarily on monuments, and doesn't have the 'personal touch'. Additionally, says Gopalakrishnan, while Google is focusing "largely on what's already known and available, we want to uncover the less-known subjects too."
For instance, when the Sahapedia team spent days archiving the Ajanta and Ellora caves, they also documented the relatively less-famous Pariyon ka talaab (pond of fairies). This spring-fed lake near Ellora is located in a village known as Valley of the Sufi Saints, and, according to local folktales, fairies stop by the water at night, and only women are allowed into the lake.
Recording such local histories and legends is also an essential part of the project, shares Gopalakrishnan. And so is adding layers to essential knowledge: everything on Sahapedia will have an image gallery, audio-visual content and reading material.
Sahapedia's objective is to be a one-stop destination, a place where every art form and cultural legacy can have an ocean of material of its own.
The upcoming module on the Chola temples, for instance, will not just focus on architecture and history, but also look into the culinary practices of the period besides delving into performance traditions like music and dance.
Documenting Buddhist architecture in India and building up resources on local histories of communities like Assam's Karbi people are just some of the projects the Sahapedia crew has their hands full with, shares Niharika Gupta of the team. "The Karbis have a cosmology of their own, and they have a different idea and understanding of life. It's only when we go beyond the surface and deeper into our knowledge systems that we find ideas which can challenge our own notions, and that's a very fascinating aspect that we want to explore," adds Gopalakrishnan.
Besides talks with Rajasthan's Rupayan Sansthan that has documented folk music and local tales since 1960, (it even has a jhaadu museum, according to Gopalakrishnan), Sahapedia is also gearing up to build a repository on the Bhakti movement, something that excites Gopalakrishnan because it "overturned all established ideas of having someone in the middle; you could directly commune with god. This movement transcended barriers of class, caste and gender." This particular project will trace the movement right from 8th to the 18th century.
Sahapedia will be defeated in its purpose if it is seen as a resource only for scholars because it is not so, emphasises Gopalakrishnan, "It has to engage multiple kinds of readership, including students and travellers."
While this is a place where buried treasures are found as a collective effort of institutions and individuals trace the outlines of our country's cultural legacy and fill in the gaps, there's a lot to work on, including making the website more browser-friendly: while inter-connected modules add great depths to a subject, it's also easy to lose yourself in a labyrinth of links and resources.
"We are just getting started," says Gopalakrishnan.