Kirat Brahma began making dolls when he was six.
His first one was a papier-mâché bird, he says.
He wanted children from Assam — a region often so isolated and underrepresented that few of us have contributed even to the massive flood relief efforts needed there this year — to have something in which they could see themselves reflected. The folktale is open-ended, meant to provoke thought and introspection. The bird’s captivity becomes a reflection on the things that weigh us down. Rather than offering a conventional escape or resolution, the story follows her gradual realisation that she can move beyond the bars that confines her. * Zara Fagla: With his mop of hair, sunglasses, dreadlocks and modern attire, this doll draws on the Bodo folk dance tradition, but reimagines the folk artist as a contemporary musical figure who encourages wisdom and unity through songs with which people of all ages can identify.
Something that would also remind them, he says, that their stories mattered, “even though they don’t show up in comic books and movies”. * Mimi: This mythical songbird loses her song after she is captured and caged. “She eventually realises that her captor is also trapped in a relationship with the ones he captures,” Brahma says.
