Growing up, visits to her maternal grandparents in Civil Lines brought photographer and visual artist Promila Bahri closer to Old Delhi’s Dussehra festivities. She recalls watching the jhankis and tableaux pass through the narrow lanes of Dariba and along streets lined with silver jewellery shops; the characters, their elaborate makeup, and the atmosphere of that time fascinated her.
Years later, Bahri has returned to the festival through ‘Gods Were Here’, a photography project on display at the Red Fort as part of the annual Ram Leela celebrations organised by the Shri Dharmic Leela Committee.
But her work looks beyond the festivities to the people and processes that make them possible. The project brings together images of performers from the century-old Ram Leela production and the artisans who create the figures that populate the festival. The photographs trace their making, from bamboo frameworks and sheets of paper to coils of wire and layers of paint, before these fragile constructions acquire a larger-than-life presence.
“I just felt that gods arrive through these artisans’ hands,” Bahri says. “First, they are making them. Then they are there on the streets. And eventually, they disappear after the Ram Leela is over.”
The hands behind the gods
While childhood memories inspired the project, Bahri returned to the tradition after the Covid-19 pandemic. A visit to Titarpur–Rajouri Garden, where artisans make the towering effigies, prompted her to begin documenting their work.
Over two years, she photographed the artisans and their processes. What began as an exploration of how the figures are made gradually developed into an inquiry into the people behind the spectacle and how these creations acquire cultural and religious significance.
“When they are being made, they are just a product. They are just statues. But as soon as they move from Titarpur to these grounds, their meaning changes. They suddenly become gods,” she says.
The project also examines the livelihoods that depend on this seasonal craft. The artisans rely on skills passed down through generations, with much of the work done by hand and family members, including children, participating in the process.
Bahri found that the artisans take considerable pride in their work, even as they worry about its uncertain future. Their earnings depend on seasonal demand and the weather, with rain posing a particular risk to the effigies displayed along roadsides. “This year, it was very low, and they said that because of the rain, they were so scared that they hadn't brought these effigies out. It is a diminishing practice,” she says.
Bahri also observed a generational shift, with many younger people choosing not to pursue the family trade. The artisans, meanwhile, often receive little recognition for their labour and may not even know where their finished creations end up. “There is a lot of labour that goes into it,” Bahri says. “They are all artists who are making their own gods.”
Myth and memory
The project’s second strand turns towards the Ram Leela performers themselves. Bahri arranged to photograph characters associated with the Committee’s long-running tradition against the historic architecture of Old Delhi, at Kathika Haveli.
Her images bring together the mythology embodied by the performers and the architecture of a city that has witnessed generations of cultural change. To establish a visual contrast, Bahri has photographed the architecture in black and white while rendering the mythological figures in saturated colours.
“When we see a black-and-white picture, we immediately think of it as an old picture. That is the reason I wanted to keep the architecture of Old Delhi in black and white,” she says. “I wanted these two visual languages to coexist without competing with each other.”
After the celebrations
For Bahri, however, the aftermath raises questions beyond impermanence. She has observed plastic and other waste around the festival grounds and is concerned about the use of firecrackers during the celebrations, particularly in a city already grappling with pollution.
She believes cultural preservation cannot be separated from environmental responsibility. Traditions must find ways to evolve, she says, pointing to eco-friendly idols and the recycling of flowers during other festivals as examples of how practices can change without losing their cultural significance.
The exhibition also invites audiences to interact with the work and respond to the mythological figures. Bahri created a large installation where visitors could engage with the images, with some folding their hands and others focusing on Ravan. The responses led her to consider a question of “who is Ravan today?”
Bahri says the project has made her more conscious of the labour and materials behind the celebrations. She plans to extend it by documenting what happens at the festival grounds after the celebrations end and tracing where the figures go, hoping to understand what their fate reveals about the future of the tradition.