Santiniketan’s many Rabindranaths

“My mother met him once.”

In Santiniketan, everyone knows who “he” is.

Bipin Karmakar's practiced hands are shaping a miniature of Rabindranath Tagore, the towering cultural icon he is referring to. “The tourists who come to Santiniketan will definitely take a Rabindranath – be it a statue or a painting. Like we buy a Jagannath idol when we go to Puri,” he adds, reverentially, equating a Hindu god to the famous 20th century literary figure. Incidentally, the Bangla pronunciation of the poet’s last name is also the word for ‘divine’ in the Bangla language where he shaped both literature and music.

More than a century has passed since Tagore established his ashram school and university (Visva Bharati) in what was then a village. Santiniketan is now a bustling town and tourist hub in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, a journey of less than three hours from Kolkata by express train.

Despite the years, the Nobel laureate remains ubiquitous to the landscape of Santiniketan – appearing or being referenced in shop names, wall hangings, miniatures, clothes, cinema halls, all sorts of memorabilia and more. It is difficult to take a step in Santiniketan without confronting something to do with Tagore.

The 62-year-old Bipin recounts how his maternal uncle had taken his mother, then a little girl, to meet Rabindranath at his residence. “They exchanged a few words. That’s all,” he says with a shy smile.

Bipin lives and works in Adityapur, a village on the outskirts of Santiniketan. Stroll around the bylanes and you can see clay being stomped on and readied for moulding, and dolls and miniatures of various types and sizes drying in the winter sun. The statues are priced between Rs. 50-200 depending on the size. Bipin and Purnima Karmakar work in their courtyard lined with statues and busts of Tagore – some already have a coat of paint, others are waiting for their turn. Bipin uses a mould to fashion the clay models.

“We work so that we can eat,” he says. Earnings remain uncertain. “I will earn more in the winter months because there are more tourists, maybe around 8,000 [rupees],” says Bipin, who takes his wares to two haats (weekly markets) – in Kankalitala and Sonajhuri. Sales drop during the summer and monsoon seasons.

In Adityapur, a town of roughly 1,800 (Census 2011), a majority of the residents belong to Scheduled Caste communities. Working with clay was not Bipin’s family occupation. Karmakars (listed as Other Backward Classes in West Bengal) are traditionally ironsmiths. But unable to survive on iron work, the family moved to clay. Bipin has been working with clay for 47 years, having learnt it first by helping out his elder brother.

The family jointly owned 10 bighas of land on which they cultivated vegetables and paddy. But earnings from the land also began to shrink and they sold five bighas about 15 years ago. “I sold it to some babus [officials] who will make a hotel. The money paid for this house,” Bipin says, raising his head for a moment to look at the two-storeyed pucca house where he lives with Purnima. “What I earn from this work would never be enough to build a house like this,” he points out.

Besides the clay models of Rabindranath, Bipin also sells jewellery that Purnima designs and makes by hand. At Kankalitala, about four-five kilometres from their home, Purnima’s neckpieces and earrings sell faster than the statues of Rabindranath.

But Bipin is always hopeful: “Last Sunday, I sold all the Rabindranaths.”