The Lane Before the Maidan
Titarpur village sits west of the Yamuna Floodplain, sandwiched between the Punjabi Bagh flyover and the river's old edge, and for most of the year it is unremarkable. Then, roughly six weeks before Dussehra, the narrow gali that runs behind the main road fills with bamboo. Bundles of it, split and soaking, lean against every wall. The smell is wet cane and fevicite and something faintly chemical from the paint drums stacked at the lane's mouth. This is where the effigy trade runs, and it runs almost entirely on one community, families who have been building Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Meghnath for three and four generations, tracing their craft back to workshops that once supplied the grounds at Ramlila Maidan and Subhash Maidan both.
.png?w=600)
