 Rais Vathori is a famous performer of band Bertha, a prominent art form that people enjoyed for centuries in Kashmir. The 28-year-old hails from Vathora, a village in central Kashmir. Once famous for street performers like Rais, locally known as bands. Dressed in colorful robes, the bands were traveled to different parts of the region with their stories of love, life and hardships. Today, the art is slowly fading away and so are the artists. But Rais is trying hard to change that. Since the beginning, people from Vathora have been associated with band Bertha, a folk theatre of comedy, tragic comedy and satire. It would at times entertain people in grief and even challenge those in power. But its popularity, like most traditional art forms, has faded over the years with technological advancement in the region. The art form also suffered and strived on Jumu in Kashmir that witnessed an increase in violence, death and conflict, especially since the outbreak of insurgency in early 1990s. Artists, like the famous bands, remained at the receiving end as the flames of war engulfed the entire territory. The artists believed there is no room for the art that makes you laugh at the time when people want to grieve. To revive band Bertha, Rais believes that folk art can be effectively used as a tool of non-violent form of protest. It is the reason that Rais participated in the agitation against the infamous Kathwa rape case in which an eight-year-old girl from Jammu Kashmir's Kathwa district was brutally raped and murdered in 2018. Rais is battling for more than a decade now to save the art of band Bertha that he believes is an essential part of the Kashmir's culture. He has been successful to an extent in doing that but a lot more needs to be done. He says with the hope that the art will again become as popular as it was. Rais is a very beautiful place and there is no theater like Band Bertha in India. If he talks to me through Band Bertha, it is an honor for him to go to Rais because of Band Bertha. I am not saying that Band Bertha is because of Rais. When I see something on social media, when I post something related to Kashmir, I see that Band Bertha was a secular form of protest. It is an area that we can always live in.