A budding filmmaker travelling his own country learns that to encounter a place is not to consume it, but to look, to listen, and sometimes not to record.
The first time I saw a performer dressed in layers of coconut leaves, his face painted bright yellow, holding an anklet before a crowd that waited in reverent silence, I lifted my camera. The air vibrated with drums and high-pitched chants as the performer’s movements blurred the line between dance and trance. I was trying to capture the intensity without knowing what I was witnessing: Bhuta Kola, a worship unique to Tulunadu—the coastal region of Karnataka stretching from Byndoor to Kasargod in Kerala.
I began my journey as a master’s student at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education during the pandemic. My first semester unfolded behind a screen; even when campus life resumed, masks and distance kept the place itself at arm’s length. Over time, Manipal revealed itself as a student town that stands apart from the rest of Tulunadu—filled with restaurants, pubs, beaches—the Arabian Sea on one side and the Western Ghats on the other. Life here is fast, youthful, and full of distractions. My early days were like any other student’s: classes, hangouts, and late-night food hunts.
When I saw an internship call for a production assistant on a project exploring the living cultures of Tulunadu, I applied without hesitation. The project aimed to curate an online course on the region’s practices, but for me, it became something else—a deep and personal encounter with Tulunadu beyond cafés and classrooms.
Like any other student, I had travelled around the region with friends—long bike rides that ended at quiet beaches or roadside temples. Along the way, I began to notice cobra-adorned pedestals appearing out of nowhere, flower-decked effigies watching silently from raised platforms. These cobras, I later learnt, were Nagas—sacred beings tied to water, fertility, and the rhythms of agricultural life. At first, I only noticed how striking they looked. Over time, they began to ask something of me: curiosity, attention, and humility.
Having a local friend deepened my curiosity. One evening, visiting her village, I witnessed something that has stayed with me. The entire community had gathered—families from far-off places, elders setting up offerings, children running around. At the centre of the crowd stood a performer adorned with ornaments and layers of fresh coconut leaves, bright face paint, and a striking Bhuta mask that glowed softly under the lamps. As the rhythmic chants and piercing sounds of traditional instruments filled the air, the atmosphere shifted—every movement, every sound, every colour felt alive.
This time, I knew what I was witnessing, yet it still felt new. I also saw how differently the locals were witnessing it. Talking with my friend later, I began to understand the meanings behind what I had only tried to capture before. She spoke of family rituals, village myths, and the ways the Bhutas were part of their everyday life. For them, this was not performance—it was presence. They were not entertained; they were devoted. What I saw as vibrant colour and spectacle, they saw as divinity.
I was busy marvelling, trying to capture how amazing it all looked. Without realising it, I was reducing the people and their faith to just what I could see—colour, rhythm, difference. In search of stories, when we gaze at the unfamiliar and rush to assume, we often step into someone’s space, home and soul.
As part of my internship, I travelled to different villages documenting similar performances. The costumes, make-up, and gestures changed from place to place. Some performers held swords; others wore masks. In some shrines, multiple spirits were invoked. Yet what stayed constant was the way the community received them—with deep faith, quiet respect, and complete surrender.
That realisation unsettled me. Until then, I had been drawn to the visual rhythm of these performances—their movement and energy through the lens. But standing among the devotees, camera in hand, I began to sense an invisible boundary between us. What for me was an image to frame was, for them, a moment of communion.
I began to notice who was performing, who was watching, who was allowed to speak about it. In many villages, those performing the Bhuta rituals belonged to communities considered lower in the social hierarchy. Women often remained outside during the main ritual, observing from a distance, yet visibly moved. The more I travelled, the more I began to see these layers—and how deeply they were tied to the land itself.
Tulunadu is an agrarian society. Its worship traditions, community practices, and rituals are inseparable from the soil. The Nagabanas, or sacred groves dedicated to the serpent deity, were once preserved patches of forest within villages. Many of them have now been replaced by concrete structures. I witnessed a few of these transformations during my time here. Bhuta worship, I learnt, is often carried out by communities considered lower caste, while Naga rituals are typically led by Brahmins—an upper-caste community.
In contrast, I came across Kaadya shrines—often forming around anthills, surrounded by rows of clay pots marking the sanctity of the space. Unlike the concrete structures, these seemed to blend into the landscape rather than alter it. The Kaadya rituals were led by local community members themselves. It felt like an act of resistance—a continuation of worship that relied not on hierarchy but on lived connection.
Working on the project opened my eyes to these layers of power, devotion, modernity, and change. Culture, I realised, is not just about identity or art; it is about survival, meaning, and the politics of representation. It holds immense value for those who live it, but it can also become a site of exclusion and control.
This tension becomes even more visible in how cinema portrays these traditions. In recent years, Indian films have turned their lens towards indigenous practices. Films such as Kantara have brought Bhuta worship into the national spotlight, but often through spectacle rather than understanding. Rituals once rooted in the soil are now reimagined as mythic action sequences—their intimacy replaced by visual grandeur. While striking on screen, such portrayals turn lived belief into aesthetic performance—faith translated into fantasy.
Watching these films after my encounters in the field felt unsettling. They revealed how easily meaning is lost when the sacred becomes cinematic material. What was once local and lived becomes stylised and folded into consumable narratives. This trend of reducing indigenous traditions to mere cinematic elements for entertainment raises difficult questions about authenticity, representation, and control in visual storytelling.
To encounter a place is not to consume it, but to be confronted by it—to recognise what one does not know. The Tulunadu I came to see was not a destination but a dialogue, one that demanded I look beyond the frame and question my own gaze—to be seen by the place as much as I saw it. The more I observed, the more I felt the land observing me back; its forests, shrines, and spirits carried a gaze of their own—quiet yet unmistakable.
As someone from outside the region, I carried my own assumptions, camera, and curiosity. But in Tulunadu, I realised that to encounter is also to be humbled—to look, to listen, and sometimes not to record.
In the end, the encounter changed me more than the place itself. To travel, I have realised, is not to move through places but to be moved by them. Among the cobras carved in stone and the spirits performing with fire, I learnt that the truest encounters are not the ones we seek to capture, but the ones that quietly capture us.
