Hanging by a thread

Artisans the untold story

BHOLA Ram Kumawat still makes the best wooden toys inUdaipur; but he may well be the craft's last sentinel.Kumawatbelongs to a family of renowned toymakersbut his son drawshandcarts for a living and his wife is a domestic help. Says the70old manThere are no forests left now - no khirni (Wrightia tinctoria) trees. How do we continue our craft? Unless the government acts soon, Udaipur's art will die.

The wood femine

IN THE small workshops of Purani Mandi in Saharanpur, woodcarvers fret, fit and polish their carvings for a revitalised urban market in India and abroad. Their own future, however, is precarious. Spiralling prices of fast-depleting raw materials and a market controlled by middlemen threaten to choke this once thriving trade.

Gandhian to the core

ABOUT 15 years ago, I read in a newspaper how handloom weavers of Varanasi were mortgaging their daughters to moneylenders because of poor income. The government supported mill cloth at the time. When I discussed the matter with Lakshmi, he had tears in his eyes. Tears because he had spent much of his life trying to support artisans, but the government failed to recognise his efforts.

A climate change for the artisan

In 1851, American writer Herman Melville wrote a novel that was then slammed as an apogee of American romanticism. A hundred and fifty years later, Moby Dick, the novel in question, appears wonderfully prescient. Now regarded as the Great American Novel, Moby Dic k is about the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab.

Handloom is haute

But the market is still too far for India's weavers

The unskilled Venkataswamy

Pankaj Sekhsaria finds out why handloom is viable--yet neglected V Venkataswamy u/s--a small sign painted in grey beside the door of a locked house in the new weavers colony of Chinnur in the Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh. It is an image from a visit almost a decade ago, but it remains vividly etched in my mind. So does the story.

Puppeteer with no strings

Imagine one man donning the hats of a director, actor, tailor, craftsman, storyteller, even magician. No, it's not tinsel-town versatility that we are talking of here. Rather, routine multi-tasking that is livelihood matter for the breadwinners of the 12,000-odd families of Kathputli colony.

Chirala saree weavers losing out to computer-aided designs

The loom in Aruna Kumari's badly lit, mud-walled house in Epurupalem village runs from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., with either Aruna or her husband working at it constantly. Her ageing grandmother contributes by winding spools of yarn and joining threads of the weft for 10 hours daily. Together, the family produces 13 Chirala sarees with ornate, heavy-work pallu and border in a month, for a combined income of a little over Rs 4,000.

Khoj: exploring spaces between art, science

At Khoj, an artists' workshop in Delhi, four artists explored shared spaces between art and science, realms that are often seen as sealed to each other Joanna Hoffman's interest lies in situating life in the workings of the universe. Life was once regarded as the defining feature of the universe. But scientists now believe that life represents a trifle aspect of. Hoffman's sound and video installation at Khoj is an artist's impression of this scientific truism.