Heaven On Earth

Pepita Seth was born in London and grew up on a farm in Suffolk. Her career began in the cutting rooms, editing British and American documentaries and feature films working with such directors as Stanley Donen, Otto Preminger, Tony Richardson and Ted Kotcheff. It was the chance discovery of her soldier great-grandfather s 1857 diary which, in 1970, inspired her to make her first visit to India. In 1972, she returned to India, more specifically, to Kerala. From then on, between work assignments, she made regular visits to Kerala, finally basing herself in Thrissur where she now lives. By 1979, she had given up all film work and, driven by her passion and respect for the region s culture and traditions, begun seriously photographing and writing about the rituals of Kerala s Hindus. In 1981, she received official permission to enter Kerala s temples including Guruvayur Temple.
She has lectured extensively on Kerala s traditions in India, Britain at the British Museum and the Nehru Centre, and the United States at the Smithsonian, Columbia and Barnard Universities. Exhibitions of her photographs have been held in India through the British Council, and in Britain and the United States under the aegis of Nikon House and Barnard University.
Her novel, The Spirit Land, was published in 1994, the year she began to focus on a single subject: the Theyyam rituals of Malabar. The 5 years she spent in northern Kerala resulted both in exhibitions in Britain and the United States and the fir