Artisans across the country are on the rack. “It was better back then, at least people used to come to distribute ration and essentials to us, no one comes now,” Mohammed Gurfan said. The 42-year-old lives with seven of his family members in Mumbai’s Dharavi and has been surviving on the ration and essentials that were distributed in the initial days of the lockdown.
Gurfan has been working for Dharavi Marketplace, an online market which sells products made by the residents of the slum, but ever since the lockdown was imposed, he is out of work. With the salary slashed to half, Gurfan struggles to survive in Mumbai and plans to return back to his hometown in Bihar. “I keep requesting my friends and neighbours to lend us essentials and ration, but not everyone helps,” he added.
Mumbai’s local train services that were suspended for nearly seven months due to plunge in covid cases are presently running for women, essential workers and certain categories, but the craftsmen across the city are finding it difficult to travel otherwise.
“We have to pay three times more to travel by taxi. It’s very expensive for us but we work in whatever way we can,” said Mohammed Usmaan, a 63-year-old artisan from Dharavi. “Earlier we did not have a minute to sit back, now we hardly get any order to complete.”
Amidst the world pandemic, the artisan sector has been neglected en masse. Followed by lockdown, the industry with the majority of migrants working has observed a slump in the number of workers and looming financial crisis.
In the narrow bylanes of Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, umpteen pieces of jewelleries are created to export, exhibit and sell. But this year, the jewellery industry has observed an enormous dip in the wake of the coronavirus. After the bazaar was shut for three days straight in the primary phase, several cases of robbery were reported in the area.
The 56-year-old Narugopal Santra had started Naru Rhodium & Naru Casting in the year 1994 with forty artisans. The business had to shut down in March, leaving no choice to the artisans but to return to their hometown.
The owner brought six of the craftsmen back from Bengal in November and kick-started the business with borrowing money from the bank. “People fear death, so they start living with the pain,” he said.
Naru Rhodium & Naru Casting is a manufacturing company established to design several pieces of jewelleries that undergo various procedures of wax injection, metal melting etcetera which requires manual work.
Ranjit Mallik, 20, went back to his hometown in Bardhaman district of West Bengal in March and returned in November, “I was out of work all this while, no one was ready to offer any kind of jobs to me. I was completely at home,” he said. The artisans got their salaries paid only after resuming the job.
“We thought the lockdown might stretch for another 2-3 months but lots of workers started going back to work so we decided to go too,” Ranjit said. “We feared transmission, but we cannot sit back without jobs, we had to work.”
With the autumn in India, comes the season of festivities, the gatherings and celebrations that take place at every nook and corner of Mumbai were a low-key affair this year. Keeping the covid protocols in mind, the festivals were commemorated safely. But the craftsmen involved in creating the same idols that were ardently devoted, could neither follow protocols nor were able to take any precautions.
Gobindho Kor Choudhury, a 50-year-old sculptor based in Mumbai has been contributing into decorating pandals and sculpting idols for twenty years now. In the beginning of March, he travelled to Bengal to bring fellow artisans and other required materials to sculpt and decorate. He was locked down and could not travel back for nearly six months.
Later when the curfew was partially uplifted, Choudhury and other artisans travelled in a tempo truck for a week risking lives in rough rains to Mumbai. The distressful journey had left them with a constant fear of transmission therefore they quarantined themselves in the very same workshop they created the idols with blood, sweat and tears overnight. “I could not see my family for eight months despite being in the same city,” Choudhury said with a heavy voice.
On the other hand, Amit Pal and his brother Uttam Pal who has been visiting Mumbai from Bengal, were initially assisting their father Nimai Pal, a sculptor. The duo later took over the business after their father’s death. For the first time in forty years they could not travel due to the virus. They had twenty-five artisans from Bengal accompanying them to help create multiple idols of various shapes and sizes every year.
The fear to bring the business back on track for the coming year is etched into the minds of the artisans, “If people continue to choose alternatives, I would have to leave this business and work myself as a labourer elsewhere,” said Pal.
At present, India crossed the mark of 9 million novel coronavirus cases last Friday and stands second after the US in the chart worldwide.
