
In Irinjalakuda, an actor invited me to travel with his troupe to see the play that they would present on a temple ground in a nearby town. I accepted, and they tied my bicycle on to the back of their bus and I went with them.
This sketch shows the view from the green room into the backstage. The theatre stood on a concrete pad on the temple grounds. The enclosure for the stage was made of tree trunks, bamboo and tarps. The leaves that hang down belong to a pepper vine. We tasted the green pepper corns. The temple is ശ്രീ പാലയ്ക്കൽ ഭഗവതി ക്ഷത്രം, the Sree Palakkal Bhagawathi Kshetram, Kerala.

In a few hours, the troupe assembled an intricate set with numerous movable elements.
The drama was വൈശാലി (Vaishali), which told of a forbidden love story during a drought. The tale originates with the Mahabharata. The story became a successful film, and then a writer adapted the film into this play.
Nadham Communications, a travelling theatre troupe, presented the play.

A stage light hangs from a rope on the set of വൈശാലി (Vaishali), a Nadham Communications drama.

The stage set is well on its way to being complete. The curtain is on the right side of the sketch: The cords for raising the curtain run through the rows of rings on the curtain.

The troupe invited me to join them in the green room. A quiet mood of focus preceded the play, all the actors and technicians going through their pre-performance preparations.

The drama, വൈശാലി (Vaishali), was part of a temple festival that lasted all day. A feast was part of the festival.
I was fascinated by this electrically motorized food grinder. It is known as a wet grinder, or ആട്ടുകല്ല് (aattukall). A heavy stone pestle was tethered to a fixed support, and a stone mortar sat in the bottom of the pot. The spinning pot, powered by a motor, contained the food to be turned into a paste. A fixed spatula scraped the food off the pot’s sidewall and redirected the food into the centre to be ground some more.
I was told that people often grind up chick peas in such a grinder.

After the performance of വൈശാലി (Vaishali), the theatre troupe quickly disassembled the set and stowed most the pieces on the bus roof, and a few pieces inside the bus. In the early hours after midnight, they were on the road again.
The troupe dropped me off in the nearest large city, and I am most grateful for how they kindly hosted me.