Akshay Gandhi during a performance 

Several centuries ago, villages in Rajasthan were home to the kaavadiya bhats, the storytellers, who'd go door to door with a kaavad — a portable wooden box (shrine) with visual narratives on its multiple panels that open and close like several thresholds of a temple — telling their patrons stories about the genealogy of their families. These stories, as real as they were, were interlinked with mythology, regional wisdom and history and would be told through the many drawings, which were only revealed when the doors of this box were opened.