image courtesy of RR Jayaram

While growing up in Kerala, on India’s southwestern coast, I often visited temples with my family. Inside, mythological figures with exaggerated eyes gazed down from painted murals on the walls and ceilings, their colors glowing through layers of soot left by oil lamps. To me, they were simply part of the landscape.

Those questions led me, in 2009, to Vaikom Mahadeva Temple in Kerala’s Kottayam district, a Hindu center of worship for more than 1,500 years and an important pilgrimage destination. I wanted to meet Manikandan Punnakkal, then a 28-year-old mural artist and conservator from Palakkad district, who was there to restore a series of 18th-century murals.

Punnakkal had begun studying the traditional mural form as a young boy, when his mother took him to a gurukula—a residential apprenticeship—to learn from a master instructor. He later earned a National Diploma from the Institute of Mural Painting at Guruvayur Devaswom in Kerala, and a Master of Fine Arts in Mysore, Karnataka.

Art historian and author M.G. Sasibhooshan dates the surviving Vaikom Temple murals to the late 18th century, when Kerala’s mural tradition flourished under temple patronage. The original artists worked within a limited palette known as Panchavarna, or “five colors”—red, yellow, green, black, and blue—all derived from natural materials gathered nearby. Minerals became pigments, plants supplied dyes, soot provided black, and lime created white.

When I arrived at Vaikom, scaffolding covered sections of the inner halls, with narrow wooden platforms running alongside the murals. Punnakkal moved along the platforms, inspecting faded areas and applying pigments with measured strokes. Below him, younger artists ground minerals, prepared binders, and mixed colors. At that point, Punnakkal had been living in the temple complex for months, starting work around 8 a.m. each day as the priests prepared for the day’s rituals. His work paused frequently for ceremonies and festivals.

“The scaffolding would remain,” he told me. But only when the celebrations ended would the work resume.

Over the next three days, I watched Punnakkal restore damaged murals and prepare sections of wall for painting. Among the figures he was restoring was Ashwaroodha Parvati, which depicts the Hindu goddess Parvati riding a horse. Punnakkal worked over the worn surface, detailing the horse’s body and mane, and the ornaments adorning the goddess. The earthy smell of natural pigments mingled with the scent of oil lamps, while the faint sounds of his tools occasionally broke the temple’s silence. It would take him 10 days to restore this single figure.

“The crisis of preservation reached a breaking point about 60 years ago,” Punnakkal told me at the time. During a previous attempt at restoration, he said, painters had applied modern oil and enamel paints directly over the original murals, “suffocating the wall surface.”

The synthetic paints trapped moisture, weakening the bond between the pigments and the surface beneath. In some places, the colors had begun to detach from the walls. Punnakkal used specialized gum treatments and mild natural solvents to remove the synthetic paints and accumulated carbon deposits—without causing further damage to the murals underneath.

As he worked, traces of lines and incomplete compositions emerged. Some of the painted fragments removed during the restoration had been handed over to authorities for safekeeping.

“I have no idea where they are now,” he said. It concerned him, because the missing fragments held clues to the original artists’ decisions.

The work of preparing a mural began long before color touched the wall. For example, to produce red and yellow pigments, Punnakkal ground up laterite, the iron-rich stone common in parts of Southern India. He first used a mortar, then a flat grinding stone, filtering the sediment repeatedly until he had a usable pigment. He also prepared the walls with successive layers of lime-based plaster, using natural materials to create a stable surface. A final lime wash provided a white background where he could sketch outlines and apply the pigments, details, and finishing lines.

Punnakkal’s restoration at Vaikom Temple took nearly two years, covering 80 murals across 42 panels—one of the largest projects of his career. When I spoke to him in February 2026, 16 years after our first meeting, he told me his work had expanded beyond historical restorations to include contemporary paintings and public art installations. One recent project, a cement-relief mural titled Crucible, is installed at the Indian Institute of Technology in Palakkad. He also teaches classical mural techniques to younger artists.

But passing his training along is not enough, he told me. “While there are schools to teach mural painting, there are few opportunities for artists to practice on actual walls.”

As a child, I had taken the temple murals all around me for granted. After meeting Punnakkal and watching him work, I began to see what I had missed: The paintings are evidence of history, and of a tradition that depends on both ancient knowledge and the modern-day artisans who carry it forward.