Land of the wooden dolls

Around 170 kms from Howrah, along the Howrah-Katwa line, is a village called Agradwip. A 10 minutes diesel auto ride from the station takes you to a very tiny village called Natungram. The painted wooden dolls we had as children, the Gour-Nitai, the kathputli bride, the raja-rani-bought at fairs and which endured our childish mishandling till their colours disappeared- these dolls are made by the 50 odd families of this village. We got down at Gour Sutradhar's house. The families here mostly bear the surname sutradhar-the story tellers. For, these dolls were used as props to tell stories once upon a time. Folk stories of Radha-Krishna, of Gouranga, of kings and queens, of Ma Lokkhi and her eponymous mount- the Owl. The owl features most prominently in the wooden sculptures here. Colourful figures, in white and red and black and yellow-with large round eyes and a hooked beak- the owl comes in all sizes, from as tiny as 2 inches to huge ones. So sought after is this owl motif, that it has made its way into a myriad different forms, from adorning the stands of little stools to acting as borders for bedroom mirrors to being placed as screens for bedside table doors. The owl, literally, is all over the place. For there are no boundaries where the craft is made. Right from the narrow village road that leads to the government workshop, to the open kitchen and verandah, to the inside of the little damp rooms- the craft is scattered all over. It forms their lives. There's no separate work life and life after work. It is all intertwined. "See how hard we work all day," says Gour Sutradhar's wife to us, busy applying a mixture of Khari-mati, flour and water on the wooden owls to smoothen their surface. To see the process from the start, we go to the workshop which also houses a four room guesthouse on the upper floor. Felled trees are brought here to be cut and chopped in machines into strips and blocks. The wood of the pinkish red p(n)eo, gamhar, neem, shimul, shegun are used prominently in the sculptures. P(n)eo is especially good as it will never crack. The blocks are then given a crude primary shape by a small handheld instrument. These are done by the men. The women then take over. First the smoothing mixture is applied and the crude dolls are left in a basket to dry. Then a white primer is applied and the figures are spread out to dry. Once dry, women or young boys take up the task of painting them with acrylic colours or oil paints. Vibrant as the figures may be, I was a tad bit disappointed to see that the painting lacked finesse. Maybe if the market is more evolved and demand for better quality goods spring up, they will consider spending more time on each figure, making the effort to paint them with care. But my slight disappointment vanished on seeing the carved neem wooden idols. From a single block of wood, like all the other figures, these are chiselled to make the forms of Ma Durga, Ganesh and the like. Using simply chisels of two different sizes, the idols are carved to perfection. Gour sutradhar added the finishing touches to the one we bought right before us. After the chiselling is over, these are sand papered and rubbed with powdered "gala" in water. You can opt for lacquer, but we decided to stick to the basic. Having seen the whole process of wooden doll making, we called the auto driver who had dropped us to this place, for there are no vehicles to take from the village. It is thus imperative that you take down the number of the driver and arrange with him to meet you later on to take you back to the station. We had come by the 8:00 am Howra-Katwa local and we would leave by the 3 pm one. You can also opt to stay overnight at the guest house, which charges Rs. 650 per person per day, meals included. All you need to do is call up someone at the village, and they will arrange for the rest. There is a Kathia baba's ashram nearby which you can visit or even go to Purbasthali Pakhiralay, just a few stations away. The artisans here also regularly take orders for interior decorations of homes and pandal making during the pujas. I am adding some of their numbers below:

Gour Sutradhar : 8145283862
Uttam Bhaskar : 9732908249
Dilip Sutradhar : 9333386501

1) The wood

2) The wood is taken to the workshop for splicing

3) Spliced wood

4) Chopped blocks of wood.

5) Smoothing mixture applied to the crudely shaped wooden blocks. The mixture is composed of Khari mati(soil), flour, water and adhesive.

6) White coating applied

7) After application of the white coating, these are left in the sun to dry.

8) Colouring begins

9) Finished dolls

10) Besides these colourful dolls, there are chiselled figures. These are a beauty.

11) The polishing mixture is applied on these chiseled dolls instead of colour.

12) There are other figures and wooden structures like the ones shown below

The making of salt

Sprawled beside the Eastern Express Highway, one of the busiest highways in Mumbai connecting CST to Thane, lies the salt pans or the salt flats, running for about 8 kms. These are the lowest points in mumbai and a buffer between the city and the sea. These are mangrove areas.They act as sponges during the rain to prevent flooding. The salty sea water is allowed to dry from September after the monsoon ends. Workers spend about seven months in a year pounding the damp fields where sea water crystallizes into white unrefined salt. Salt takes form between January and March under conducive weather conditions, when it is collected. Happy salting!

Doll's House

It was raining in a light steady drizzling way when I got down from the Toto in the middle of the road. There was a road to the right and one to the left. With little houses of just about any shape and random statues of just about any size strewn about, it was as if a little boy had abandoned his toys and run back home in the rain. I looked around and felt lost, but that’s what I usually feel under most circumstances. “Is this where they make dolls?” I asked the Toto driver in the most idiotic way possible, ”Are the workshops here?” He nonchalantly waved in an indefinite direction with an even more vague “All here” and sped away. So I stood there in the middle of what I felt was nowhere, trying to mentally sort out the place, manage my bag , umbrella, camera and wondering what to now make of my ill-defined fancy.
For I had been longing to come to this little place called Ghurni in Krishnanagar, about 3 hours from Sealdah station in Kolkata. (Now Sealdah station is one living hell and filthy beyond measure, but that’s the only bad part of the journey). This was going to be a magical place with obscure artists engrossed in crafting earthen dolls with a finesse unmatched in the country. Maybe they would be sitting in little thatched huts with clay figures and colours all around them. These were the nightly yarns I had been spinning inside my head. Now I stood, brushing away the raindrops from my eyes and looking very touristy and very stupid. “I have no idea what to do”, I finally said out aloud. I took one road and started walking along it. It was a Sunday afternoon and the shops dotting the left side of the road had most of their shutters down. I walked up and down the street for a couple of times, trying to take in the scene. Nobody was making dolls, but there were plenty for sale. One old man at the back of a long shop seemed not too pleased at questions. Large white busts of Indira and Rajeev, Rabindranath and Vivekananda stood outside the shops. Inside were small human figures, fruits, birds, framed goddesses, fat bellied Ganesha, bronzed wall hangings, Jesus on the cross, greek looking soldiers and women and a lot of jumbled up stuff that did not register in my head. Here was an odd mix of strikingly good and extremely ordinary work all side by side. Some of the shops had a name followed by a “Gold medallist”, “President’s awardee” tagged along. Not many people seemed to be about and I hesitantly peeped in most of the shops and found them empty. The owners were nowhere around.

And then I spotted one lone man sitting in corner in a crooked triangular room just off the street, bending over with a brush, giving finishing touches to a doll. He was a middle aged man with very yellowed fingers, with some dozen and a half little colourful humans beside him waiting to spring to life. It was a bare shop, with rows of Jaadu dolls in the glasscase behind and a couple of water bottles in front. On the floor was the saffron baul and his baulni, the farmer and his wife, the African tribal drummers- pairs of 9 inch dolls, clothed in bright colourful dresses and exqusitely done features. They make them in four sizes- 4,6,9 and 12 inch human figures. And this is what Krishnanagar’s terracotta art is famous for.

I asked hesitantly if I could take photographs. And then his disarming smile made me sit down at the edge of his tiny shop and ask him everything I wanted to know about this place. He was so frank, so utterly at ease, all the while giving finishing touches to his dolls. But he wouldn't sell them to me. And there came the first hints of the sinister troubles haunting this magical little village. The craftsmen are mostly all bound to the local shopkeepers. These people provide the capital, though delayed and they pretty much control all orders and sales. The local shopkeepers, who I talked to later in the day, were frank that they did not want to sell outside this place. They wanted the trade to remain in Ghurni. Even if that meant the gradual dying out of the superior art. For it was dying out. With less demand for superior work, craftsmen were forced to create and recreate the same stock figures without the scope or the money or the leisure for new and path breaking creations in human figures. Ghurni is slowly spiralling into a rut of stagnation.

As I was musing thus, the drizzle changed to a downpour. I ran for shelter. And then- there it was - abandoned on the roadside, without so much as a cover to shield it from the gusts of rain. Pieta. Michelangelo’s masterpiece. As I stood transfixed, never having expected to chance upon that classical wonder of world sculpture in the little town of Ghurni of all places, somehow it felt more appropriate here than in the pristine marbled hall of the St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican. This rugged surrounding is where Pieta was at home-with the rickety shacks of Bamboo, tarpaulin and whatever-was-available to make the little homes around, the rain flowing down the body of lifeless Jesus in Mother Mary’s arms- as if the sky above broke down to shed her tears where the mother’s grief had shocked her to a tearless silence. Then a little girl with happy bright eyes peeked shyly. The spell was broken. “Who made this?” I asked her. She pointed to a low one storeyed house. I smiled.

This was our Pieta. Crafted from clay and moulded in fibre glass. And at that moment I felt this recreated adaptation, oddly enough, defined our cultural outlook. For we have embraced whatever took our fancy from the world around and made it our very own- be it Chinese cuisine or Lucknowi Biriyani, immortal poetry of Rabindranath set to Scottish tunes or the stories of Ram and Krishna crafted on the walls of iconic Bishnupur terracotta temples- seamlessly harmonized with scenes from Muslim royal courts and fire breathing dragons. Or the clay models of African tribals and Thai farmers made in Ghurni. The Durga Puja witnesses one of the largest art and sculpture displays scattered all over the state. In that is seen the most spontaneous fusion of every art form from classic Bengal folk to free form modern to tribal to Greco-Roman stylized image of the Goddess. It is during the Pooja that Ghurni is devoid of artisans because almost everyone goes to the cities for making the clay idols. Despite the stagnation and falling sales in Ghurni, work during the Pooja's is what keeps artists going. The essence of Bengal is captured in the fakirs and bauls of Bolpur, the boatmen’s soul rupturing Bhatiali, the Chau dance of Purulia, in the rhythmic swaying kirtan, in the verses of the rustic Vaishnav padabali. In Ghurni's little clay dolls it is this Bengal that comes alive. For, Bengal, is essentially folk, never having sacrificed free form art to make it institutionalized and frame bound. The boundaries have remained porous- for blending in with the world culture at large. Therein lies the elusive sweetness of this land. Therein also lies our shortcoming- of never realizing our potential, of staying content with a certain level of mediocrity and seldom pushing ourselves towards excellence. Thus we have heart wrenching songs of loss and poverty and suffering, songs which stir us to the very core in their earnest poignancy- but have we ever been able to create that mastery with songs of hope, of happiness?
We need to discover that throbbing pulsation of raw energy in Bengal’s art forms and take it to a larger arena on the world stage- where it indeed belongs.