In the autumn of 2003, Poh Sim Plowright went to Rajasthan—the cradle of string puppetry, where the Creator is perceived as the Arch Puppeteer controlling humans through strings—in search of the provenance of its famed string-puppet tradition (kathputli). She found an ancient collection of thirty-two stories—Sinhasan Battisi—(hitherto unknown in the West), focusing on a golden throne and female puppet power, which provides eloquent testimony to the original importance of the puppet art in that part of India. Yet in the streets of Udaipur today, that art seems to have been reduced to gaudy souvenirs and variety acts aimed at the foreign tourist. The old stories with their nourishing narrative frameworks are gone, and the town of Bassi, once famous for its wood-carvers and specialist puppet-makers, has abandoned its traditional rituals and techniques in the face of commercialism. In this article, the author considers the current state of string puppetry in Rajasthan in the absence of these rituals and stories, and looks at the possible future of the art. Poh Sim Plowright is Senior Lecturer in Oriental Drama and the Director of the Noh Centre at Royal Holloway, University of London.