Old Man

I suddenly unearthed this sketch while going through and sorting out some of my stuff. Its a quick one done during a Perch trip to Calicut in 2007. Fourteen of us had wandered all over Calicut for four days in search of ideas for sets, costumes, characters and genuine flavour for two upcoming productions.

This man was from the Moplah community of Kuttichera and wears the typical head-gear, a large white cotton handkerchief with a thin blue border and it's tied from back to front with a knot on the forehead. Kuttichera is a locality in the Northern part of calicut where we found a lot of what we were looking for. It's an old locality, dominated by a large water-tank with steps leading down from all sides. The water is clean and quite deep and used for bathing. For safety, a parapet wall runs all around the tank and a pavement along it. This old man was sitting on that parapet in the hot sun catching a few winks.