How Mona makes the bansuri sing

Mona’s eyes are closed. In one hand, she holds a heated rod, in the other a hollow bamboo stick. Smoke fills the room. Her eyes still shut, she punches a hole in the bamboo with the rod, then another, and another. Six in total.

Opening her eyes, she says, “to make a bansuri requires skill and to make more pieces requires speed.” And then she laughs and adds, “men can’t do this. It’s a tough task!”

Mona (she prefers to use this name) is a third-generation bansuri-maker. “A bansuri is a simple yet an intricate instrument,” says the 35-year-old. “without the holes it is just a bamboo stick, but with the right holes, it has all the melodies, it is a symbol of Kanha ji [Lord Krishna].”

She is sitting in the middle of an unplastered room next to a mud stove with blazing coal. Sunlight spills in through the only window in this room on the roof; outside, kites hover in the sky.

Mona lives in Pilibhit, a town on the northern edge of Uttar Pradesh. Bansuri artisans like Mona trace their roots back here centuries. The town, located in the foothills of the Himalayas, accounts for almost 90 per cent of the flute production across India. The bamboo (Schizostachyum) used in this craft is sourced from Assam.

“I have always seen flutes being made, for as far back as I can remember,” says Mona, who learnt this trade from her mother. “When I was very young, I watched my mother sit in front of the fire, making holes in the bamboo.” The young girl learnt by watching and then practicing making holes.

It’s nine in the morning, and the air is warmer on this summer day in April. Mona arrives in the terrace workshop and is soon joined by her neighbour Shabnam and her niece Sonam, both in their early twenties. By 2 p.m., the trio have worked on 500 bansuris, earning around Rs. 300 in total. In a year, that is close to 2 lakh flutes.

Despite the staggering number of bansuris she has helped make in her life, “I have never actually thought of playing a bansuri because women don’t. My husband does it really well, I enjoy listening to him play,” she tells PARI.

“If we apply too much or too little pressure while making holes, then bamboo sticks will tear from inside, wasting a whole piece,” Mona explains while showing a broken stick.

The women use sharp tools – hacksaws, blades, tuner knives — and then sandpaper to smoothen the surface. Mona explains how the hacksaw is used to cut the bamboo stick; blades, chisels and knives are used to peel and shape it. The tuner knives and iron rods are used to make the holes.

“It’s very likely to get a cut or a burn on your hands. If it gets cut a little deep, then you can’t work for almost a week and lose out on daily wages,” Mona points out.

Many artisans also suffer from respiratory issues due to long-term exposure to smoke produced during the bamboo curing process. Mona says her eyesight has gotten weaker over the years, and her back hurts. “I can’t even thread a needle now because of the condition of my eyesight,” she adds.

Mona belongs to the Sheikh Mansoori community (listed as OBC in the state). “Earlier only our community used to be in this profession. But now, other castes have also started making money through this craft,” she tells PARI.

Mona estimates that almost 100–150 women across the city are involved in this work. Their role is important, but it is wholesale merchants and retailers who control the supply and sales of flutes. They set prices, wages and deal with the buyers outside the market of Pilibhit, usually in Mathura. Daily wage labourers, mostly men, shape the bamboo into the body of the flute, fetching them around Rs. 300–350 a day for 500 pieces, well below the minimum wage in Uttar Pradesh for both semi-skilled and skilled labour (Rs. 465.13 and Rs. 521).

The roughly 300 rupees that Mona earns in a day is split with Sonam and Shabnam, placing her earnings well below the minimum wage.

Mona works under ‘kashkaars’ (wholesale traders) as a daily wager. The kashkaars own the necessary capital to buy the raw materials, employ workers and transport the bansuris to markets outside Pilibhit. “Kashkaars’ wives don’t work in bansuri making because they don’t have to, they have enough means to sustain their family without their wives working,” says Mona’s husband, Shakeel Ahmed.

“Five years ago [2020], we [my husband and I] took a loan of 50,000 rupees from the Union Bank in the hope of establishing our own small business of complete bansuri making,” recalls Mona, excitement giving way to a tone of sadness. “We aimed for larger loans of up to 3–4 lakh [rupees], but due the lack of collateral, we were denied.”

Artisans like Mona say they spend more on buying Assamese bamboo from local sellers who charge a lot. Their margins are low: “The smaller ones [10 inches] sell for five to 10 rupees and the bigger ones [15 inches] for twenty,” she says listing out the prices of bamboo by length.

But Mona’s flute sells for Rs. 50 or so in the market, depending on size and quality. Her husband Shakeel travels to Amritsar every month to hawk flutes at local fairs. But this unsteady income is not enough to lift them out of financial strain. And they end up selling finished flutes back to the same merchants they bought bamboo from at lower rates. This locks them in a cycle of debt and dependency. Today, they continue paying Rs.1,000 monthly towards the loan which has a 6.4 per cent interest rate, but have yet to clear the debt due to ongoing losses.