Seeng ki kangi: the fine-tooth legacy of Sarai Tarin

In Sarai Tarin, a neighbourhood in the town of Sambhal, famous for bone and horn products such as buttons, beer tumblers, home decor items and kitchenware, Mohammad Islam gets a steady stream of customers at his tiny, rented shop. There are children seeking candy, adults picking up daily rations and some elderly men looking to buy a fine-tooth comb.

Above him, a hand-painted sign announces: “Seeng ki Kangi,” or buffalo horn comb.

Islam, 60, is among the last craftsmen in Sarai Tarin still skilled in making combs from horn. His longtime associate, Maqsood Khan, in his late 70s, is one of the few remaining suppliers of the item.

“Artisans of this craft who passed away have taken the art with them – there is no reviving it,” Islam says, taking a drag from a hookah. “You can roam all over Sarai Tarin, but if it’s a horn-comb artisan you are looking for, everyone will direct you to me.”

In 2022, the craft was given a Geographic Indication (GI) tag, a form of intellectual property protection that helps to distinguish products based on their place of origin. Handicrafts of horn and bone are also promoted as special to Sambhal in the government of Uttar Pradesh’s One District, One Product scheme for crafts.

“Jiske sar par baal, uski kangi [whoever has hair needs a comb],” Islam playfully quotes a common phrase. “There was a time when combs were everywhere – at every street corner and intersection.”

He rents the store – also his workshop – for Rs. 2,000 a month, constantly juggling the roles of shopkeeper and craftsman. Spread in front of him now are the tools of his craft: several types of aari (saws), rait (chisels), chhilli (scraper), sheets of regmaal (sandpaper), and an adda (a wooden board) used to position the combs.

Even the tools are now hard to find, he says. “Just like there are no artisans left, there’s no one making the tools either. I am always doing some kind of jugaad [improvisation]. Take the aari, for example – it has a specific kind of tooth that you can’t find any more. I had this one especially made in Aligarh,” Islam says.

To make the combs, Islam obtains flattened horn plates—the hollow horn forced open and pressed flat – from nearby kharkhanas (factory units) at Rs. 15 each. A finished kangi sells for around Rs. 20, earning him a profit of Rs. 5 a piece. It takes him two hours to make one comb.

“Ek kangi 75 haatho se nikalkar banti thi [75 artisans would work on every comb],” Islam says. “Now, I do it all by myself. I make them in hundreds every month and, if Allah wills, a supplier will turn up to buy them.” The day of our visit, Maqsood Khan bought 30 combs for Rs. 600.

Islam places a horn plate on the adda and uses a chhilli to scrape its surface. “This is called chhilayi ka kaam,” Islam explains. “It is perhaps the most laborious part of the process. In the old days, artisans often avoided this line of work because it required squatting for hours.”

Once the horn plate is scraped to an appropriate thickness, he uses different kinds of saws to cut the teeth of the comb. “The art lies in making sure each tooth is evenly spaced. There’s no fixed number of teeth a kangi should have. The size of each tooth also depends on the overall size of the comb,” Islam says. “Only a dastakaar [craftsperson] can make the teeth. Machines cannot do such detailed work.”

Working on a three-inch horn plate, Islam carves 42 teeth on either side. Larger plates will mean more teeth, less than a millimetre apart. Some of his combs are miniatures – as tall as half a finger.

After the teeth are carved, the combs are sandpapered, then scraped again for a refined finish. Once the shape is final, a second polishing gives it lustre. On request, the kangi may be engraved with flowers and dots.

“These combs can only be made from buffalo horns. Ox horns are layered like onions – it is impossible to pull a saw through. Bones are too hard. Only buffalo horns have the right density to make combs,” Islam says.

A glass showcase in his shop displays a range of combs. There is the sardaron ki kangi, used for setting turbans; mullaon-wali kangi, meant for grooming beards; and bhoora kangi, a light brown comb.

A special type of horn comb that has vanished from markets is the tel wali kangi, with hollow teeth to release oil on the scalp. “The artisans who knew how to make it have all passed away,” Islam says.

Islam learnt the craft of making combs at the age of 10 from his father. “Ye hamara dadilaahi kaam hai [it is our ancestral work]. Every horn-comb artisan belongs to Sarai Tarin. They may have worked elsewhere, but their roots belong to this place,” he says. It took Islam 15 years to learn the craft.

His children are now working – one son is a wood craftsman in Moradabad; another is a tailor; two daughters work from home as tailors; two are still studying; the eldest two daughters are married. Still, he cannot stop working, he says. “A dastakaar can’t sit idle. I enjoy the work. It is laborious, sure, but my body doesn’t ache. Jism kaam mangta hai [the body craves labour].”

When Islam is not making combs, he also makes wooden toys, little wooden palang (beds) or a nutt, a balancing doll. “I started making these things when I was resigned to the bed after an accident 12 years ago. I can’t sit and rest, so I made these balancing dolls, which I sold for 50 rupees,” he says.

The craft helped raise his children, but the family saw financial growth only after his children began to work.

“All my daughters can read the Quran,” Islam says proudly, “but my sons can’t. Once my children began earning, they sent my two youngest daughters to college. Everyone in the family pitched in. Now both girls want to work. Maybe they can become home tutors.” Nobody else in the family went to college.

Forty years ago, Islam earned just Rs. 11 to 12 after a 12to 15 hour workday. “Bas pet hi bhar jaata tha, kuch bachta nahin tha [the work fed us, but there was nothing left to save],” he says.

Artisans would sometimes wake up at 2 am after a full day’s work, and start making combs again. “Bohot ajeeb-o-ghareeb waqt tha [it was a strange time]. As many as 700 kangi would go out from one kharkhana of seven artisans, and there were many such kharkhanas.”

Maqsood Khan, who has been working as a supplier for the last 60 years, chimes in. “Iss kaam se humein ulfiyat hai [we are emotionally attached to this work].”

Decades ago, people believed the seeng ki kangi had medical benefits. “It was thought to remove juen-likhen [head lice and nits] better than other combs. Using it would reduce dandruff too. The mandi [market] was full of saudagar [big traders], who dispatched crate after crate throughout the country,” Khan says. “Ab saudagar bhi khatam, aur kharidaar bhi [now the traders are gone, and so are the buyers]."

The comb was particularly popular among women, who would search for them at village fairs. “Even today, older women seek out these combs, but the younger ones are reluctant to buy them,” Khan says.

Khan and Islam, who have nurtured a business relationship over 40 years, are taking turns drawing from a shared hookah. “Back then, every kharkhana had a hookah. Ek bahana tha aaram karne ka [it was an excuse to take a break],” Khan recalls. “The old men would sit around the hookah and watch the younger ones at work.”

Comb makers who moved on to other professions still visit Islam for banter over a few puffs of his hookah.

The biggest market for seeng ki kangi was Kanpur, followed closely by Agra. Unlike bone and horn handicrafts in Sarai Tarin today, which are largely exported to Europe, America and the Gulf, the demand for horn combs was entirely domestic.

“Aaj log seeng se bhindyate hain [people today avoid horns]. The younger generation thinks that it is dirty,” Khan says. He attributes the decline in demand to this perception, as well as the rise of plastic combs.

The majority of customers buying horn combs used to be Hindus who also used it ritually, Islam says. “Pehle ye batate the log ki nadi mein gaye, sar mein ye kangi lagayi, aur Ganga mayya ko chada di [we were told that people used to wear the comb in their hair, bathe in the Ganga, and offer it to the river as part of the ritual]. The wealthiest families would buy these in hundreds.”

Hindus today avoid horns, he concedes, but gives no reason. “They know better why they avoid it now,” is all he says.

The other reason for the decline in demand is the end of village and town fairs. “We used to sell these combs in such large numbers that artisans would marry off their children after coming back from the melas [fairs]. A fair would earn us a profit of around 10,000 rupees in eight-nine days. There were urs [death anniversary of Sufi saints] fairs in Ajmer, Kaliyar, Badaun and others. There were numaish [exhibitions] in cities like Aligarh. And there were local village fairs for Neza [observed in Sambhal and nearby villages in memory of a Sufi warrior], Muharram, Eid, Mehndi ki Raat,” Islam recalls nostalgically. “Such days are gone, there are hardly any fairs now.”

Four years ago, Islam was invited to a trade fair in Noida. “It was unlike anything I have ever been to—videshi logo ki thi [it was meant for foreigners]. I saw foreigners so closely for the first time in my life,” Islam says.

During the inaugural, chief minister Yogi Adityanath visited his stall. “The crowd gathered around me. To their amusement, I did a stunt—I locked one leg behind my head and then began to draw the saw through the horn plate. Everyone clapped,” Islam says, still delighted by the memory. “I also witnessed a fashion show for the first time in my life.”

Though the traditional seeng ki kangi has nearly vanished from Sarai Tarin, bone and horn handicrafts are a thriving industry, mostly for exports. The region is dotted with banners of suppliers and exporters, while inside the kharkhanas, generations of artisans and labourers work on different stages of bone and horn handicrafts. The majority of the workers are Muslims.

“The younger generation is employed in handicraft work, but they have no idea about how it all started with seeng ki kangi,” Khan laments.

Mehdi Hasan, 38, is a local distributor whose ancestors worked as horn-comb artisans. “My father and grandfather worked on seeng ki kangi.” he recalls. “I was just a boy then, but I remember that they would cut, mould, shape, and polish horns with their hands, something done with machines now.”

Hasan began as an artisan and learnt the craft by observing his father, Mahmud Hasan. “We could have become engineers or doctors but education was not a priority at the time due to our financial condition. So, we focused on growing our business,” he says.

Hasan’s office showcases a wide range of horn products: beer glasses, photo frames, cups, fruit baskets, dice, eyeglass frames, and home decor. “Angrez har cheez naturally istemaal karna chahte hain [foreigners prefer to use natural products],” Hasan remarks. “That’s why most of our items are exported to Europe, Gulf countries, and the United States. Nobody knows Sambhal, but the world recognises it due to the work that we do in Sarai Tarin,” he adds proudly.

Domestic demand is negligible. Hasan says production of seeng ki kangi vanished altogether when artisans and suppliers pivoted to meet international demand and local people could no longer afford the expensive products. “Also, Hindu buyers hesitate to buy these products because they are made of horns.” The Hindus in the industry – fewer than 20 per cent of all workers, according to Hasan – either work in packaging or as suppliers and exporters.

In Hasan’s kharkhana, horns as long as an arm are stacked. “Just like there are different languages in India, there are different horns,” Hasan remarks. “The finest come from buffaloes in Gujarat, especially around Ahmedabad, because they are large and easy to craft.”

The air in the karkhana is dense with residue sawdust from scraping. “We get used to it after a while,” says Hasan. The residue is collected, packaged, and sold in the market, to be used as fertiliser or for other purposes.

Hasan is quick to address concerns around the sourcing of his raw material, saying animals are not slaughtered for handicrafts. Instead, bones and horns that would otherwise be discarded as waste are purchased and turned into something useful.

The raw material, known locally as gila samaan (wet goods), is left to dry in slaughterhouses before being transported to Sarai Tarin.

Once dried, the raw material is cut into pieces, before undergoing sikai ka kaam, softening and flattening over burning coal. “Sikai is the most laborious part of the process because of the intense heat,” Hasan explains.

After flattening, the horn is pressed into different forms or shapes using metal moulds. The moulded pieces are then refined and polished by machines.

Mumtiaz Khan, an artisan of 15 years, recently started his own firm and now works both as a craftsman and a distributor. He works on buttons made of bones. “There’s not much difference between horn and bone in terms of what we make,” he says. “But horn products require more material and take longer.”

Some products combine horn and bone to enhance design and durability. “For instance, a photo frame might be made of horn, while the decorative inlay is done with bone,” Mumtiaz explains. Some products also include chemical ka kaam [synthetic coatings] and plastic detailing.

Mumtiaz sources bone material in bulk, typically by the quintal. One kilogram of raw horn costs him around Rs. 70, but it takes nearly four kg of raw material to produce just one kilo of finished buttons. These buttons sell for approximately Rs. 440 a kilo. In other words, a quintal (100 kilo) of raw horn yields about 30 kilos of buttons.

Buttons, often crafted from bone, are one of the signature products of Sarai Tarin. “These buttons typically end up on luxury suits,” Mumtiaz says. The process begins with cutting bone pieces using a machine, before they are polished. They then undergo tikli ka kaam, where the material is shaped into precise buttons ready for engraving or a final polish.

An artisan earns Rs. 400 to 800 a day, depending on the experience and quality of work. “A newbie in tikli ka kaam would earn 500 rupees, while an artisan with more experience would earn 800 rupees a day for the same work. It also depends on the quality of work,” Mumtiaz says.

Reflecting on his decision to own a firm and not work as a labourer, he says. “Paise ko paisa kamata hai [investments build wealth]. I am earning almost the same as when I was a worker. The difference is that I have more stress now,” he says.

A returnee from Kuwait, where he worked in hospitality, Mumtiaz spends his free time watching the news. “Almost 50 per cent of bone and horn handicraft businesses have shut down,” he says. “It’s because of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Israel-Gaza conflict, and the new tariffs imposed by the United States.”

The younger generation aspires to become exporters or suppliers. Maqsood Khan’s son, for example, uses social media to sell handicraft products.

Islam and Khan wonder whether the craft of comb-making will some day, not long in the future, be a mere memory. “I would like to teach this craft to my children and the youth of Sarai Tarin, but there is no profit. Pehle ye kaam iss jagah ka sahara tha [the craft once sustained the town],” Islam says. “If it were still profitable, no one would have left it behind.”

This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF)