Katakali Story

In a time long gone before, a dashing explorer wandered the mystical lands of the East, seeing wondrous sights that made his heart leap with amazement. On the majestic elephant’s back, riding the finest steeds, even walking for innumerable hot days and dewy nights on end, he learnt of profound magic and illusion, of sorcerers and saints. Gathering up precious objects, exotic spices, voluptuous concubines and strange beasts...all intermingled with fantastical stories of adventure and the ancient lore of fabled India.

On his return, the intrepid traveller retired his retinue and offered up his Eastern wares to the Sultan, unveiling one treasure each day, to the delight of the Great Ruler. On the very last day, the traveller begged that he be allowed to gift the Sultan a very special talisman. He then undid a knot in his beard and pulled out a small seed, shaped like an almond, with a staring spot in its centre, quite like an eye. “Do you make a fool of me, gypsy?” cried the Sultan. So saying, he threw the seed out into his vast, scented gardens. The traveller smiled, and as the guards moved in to arrest him, behold, he disappeared in a puff of smoke!

And so it came to pass that an enchanted tree flowered at the very place the seed fell. Abundant with life and tales of people far away, its leaves transformed into eyes at night, windows to cultures that the traveller had chanced upon, and encounters he had barely escaped from. On its branches sat unearthly creatures – half man, half beast, peacocks with their feathers in constant emerald array, dancing girls of heavenly beauty and a trumpeter who played tunes of a million different tongues, all bathed in the bewitching fragrance of its flowers.

The tree was an ode to the heroes and gods of the land it came from, yet it grew from the soil of its new home. Its creatures spoke of distant dreams, but they were the night visions of this tribe. Its leaves saw much and revealed all. It was truly a tree of intertwining journeys and stories.

Katakali is that tree. Discover in its space beautiful objects that tell their own tales of lands far, far away.