Dorjee Khandu Khrimey was 24 when he realised something strange about his own village. The ritual dances of Shergaon in Arunachal Pradesh still echoed with stories of animals and spirits, yet the masks that once carried those stories had disappeared. “Seeing the art of mask making disappear from our village, I thought of becoming a mask maker to preserve the craft and also make masks for posterity so that they have a keepsake from their culture.”
Until 2022, mask making in Shergaon had been on pause for decades. Masks used in rituals were brought in from Tibet and Bhutan. The shift changed when wildlife researcher Tripti Shukla arrived in Shergaon to document local traditions. What caught her attention were the masks. The wood was abundant, the stories still alive in memory, but the hands that once carved them had gone quiet.
Seeing the art of mask-making disappear from our village, I thought of becoming a mask maker to preserve the craft and also make masks for posterity so that they have a keepsake from their culture.
Dorjee Khandu Khrimey, a mask maker
Sensing this absence, Shukla worked with a local community library to bring together 10 villagers interested in learning the craft. A master artisan from a neighbouring village was invited to teach them, with support from the Wildlife Trust of India and Royal Enfield Social Mission. For Khrimey, it became more than a workshop—it was a chance to reclaim something his village had lost.
For the Sherdukpen tribe, masks are not decorative artefacts but living philosophy. They are worn during Bardo Chham, a folk dance performed at the monsoon festival of Prido Chhepchi, unique to Shergaon. Each animal mask carries symbolic meaning; together they represent Bardo—the liminal space between death and rebirth. For many Sherdukpens, mask making is a return to something admired from afar. The first masks carved by the new learners were donated to the village monastery. Khrimey now hopes to recreate the masks his grandfather once made, preserved today only as fragments of memory. In Shergaon, those memories are slowly being given faces again.