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Choti Haldwani marked 100 years in 2015 with Jungle ke Rehesya, a shadow-puppet play made by young people from the village and nearby communities. The production brought together stories from Jim Corbett’s books and local accounts of encounters with wildlife and the supernatural, as Chatura Rao reported in Scroll on January 2, 2016.
What happened at Choti Haldwani’s centenary?
The 2015 event was both a celebration of the village’s centenary and a community-made performance. Rao’s report says Jim Corbett established Choti Haldwani in Nainital district, Uttarakhand, in 1915. According to her account, he bought 221 acres in the Kumaon foothills, built homes for about 40 families, designed irrigation and put up a wall intended to keep wild animals out. The report says he later handed the village to his tenants and left for Kenya in 1947.
Those details are attributed here to Rao’s 2016 account. The report also described the village as roughly 20 kilometres from Corbett National Park and noted about 350 documented bird species at the time; that figure is not a current survey. Residents, Rao wrote, crossed into forest inhabited by elephants and leopards to collect firewood and other forest produce.
What was Jungle ke Rehesya?
Jungle ke Rehesya—the report renders the title as “Secrets of the Jungle”—was a shadow-puppet play prepared for the centenary. Corbett Gram Vikas Samiti invited puppeteers Anurupa Roy and Asha of Delhi’s Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust to help develop it, with funding from Corbett Tiger Reserve. Rao joined the project as writer-on-board on December 15, 2015.
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The performance opened on December 26, 2015. Rao reported an audience of 300, including Corbett National Park officials and actor Tom Alter. Heritage interpreter Anjali Bharthari, quoted in the report, called it “the first time shadow puppetry is being done in Uttarakhand”; that was her description of the project at the time, not an independently established statewide history.
Which stories inspired the play?
The script drew on material associated with three books by Corbett—Jungle Lore, My India and Temple Tiger—as well as stories shared by residents. The strands included a churail story discussed in Jungle Lore and tiger-encounter stories linked to the other books.
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Folklore and local testimony
A churail is a figure in South Asian folklore, often described as a female spirit. Rao recounted a local woman’s account of an encounter with one; it should be understood as testimony about a reported experience and a story tradition, not proof of a supernatural event. Other women in the production mimed encounters with bears and elephants, drawing on local accounts of life alongside wildlife.
How did local young people make the show?
Rao reported that 24 young people from Choti Haldwani and neighbouring villages worked on the script and staging. The performance used paper puppets and a six-by-eight-foot wooden frame covered with a white cloth screen.
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Five children played characters and two served as narrators, while five young women manipulated the puppets behind the screen. Separately, eight children attended a story-making workshop. The arrangement made the mechanics of shadow theatre part of the event: local actor and narrator Mukesh Nainwal told Rao that audience members peeped behind the screen to see how the shadows were made. He said, “I’ve never had such a great show.”
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does the report establish—and what remains unknown?
Rao’s article documents a specific cultural project in 2015: a centenary performance built by local participants with professional puppeteers, combining published stories and community accounts. It does not establish whether Jungle ke Rehesya continued after its opening, whether it is performed today, or whether visitors can currently book a related experience. Nor does its 2016 account update the village’s bird count or describe current community arrangements.
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