Chapter II
Chapters 2 of Thread Whispers, built on the same foundations and concepts as the first chapter, focus on the indigenous people of Kanha, displaced from the jungle to peripheral villages, and on a community of weavers living in the Rajasthani desert outside Bikaner.
In Kanha, the storytellers and actors incorporate local landscapes and flora into their stories, interweaving the past and the present in a bizarre story involving helicopters and an elixir of life, blowing magical bubbles from the crushed stem of a biodiesel plant, and a tale of a morally confused tiger's suicide. The stories reveal a powerful connection between the storytellers and the plants and animals living alongside them, which Gupta and Adams explore in photograph ad text.
The stories told by weaving and farming communities in Rajasthan are also rooted somewhere between an ancient past and a complex present. These stories take place in the surrounding desert, spanning fantastical epics to allegories on appreciating the value of things. The stories are rich with textures, from the sand and diamonds of the landscape to the lush textiles spun and woven by the men and women of the community. These textures translate into image and text in vivid and sensuous retellings.