Sia kalam: etched in history

The petals of a rose, the veins on a leaf. Irshad Hussain can etch all these and more on metal. He is an artist, and his art is sia kalam, practised in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad, popularly known as pital nagari (brass city).

The pieces he has engraved through the day lie scattered around him in his workshop in Peerzada: peacocks, oil lamps, cups decorated with a swastika, prayer bells, and a lion-head on the hilt of a sword.

Hussain comes from a long line of sia kalam artisans and started working when he was 10 years old. The diya (lamp) that he is engraving is positioned on a tipai, a small wooden table, and adjusted between two stones placed on the table. A thread tied to the diya runs under the table and is gripped by his right foot. As Hussain strikes a wooden stick on the pen-shaped chisel, a fine pattern emerges on the metal.

“Customers often ask for unique patterns for personalised gifts – names of couples in Hindi, Urdu, English, Quranic surahs, motifs to hang on walls. I decorate them with flowers because they like it,” he tells PARI. “My favourites are the ones with roses.”

The master engraver is seated in the doorway of a 10-square-foot room that he shares with other artisans. “Seekhne ke waqt ye kalakari lagta tha [At the time of learning it felt like an artform],” he says, recalling his early days. “Aur ab bas kaam [Now it’s just work].”

The 47-year-old craftsman offers us tea as he lights a beedi from a packet next to him. “Artisans love tea because it gives us energy. I smoke beedis to relieve stress,” he says laughing.

Husain works in the old section of the city, dotted with cubby-hole-sized furnaces and workspaces. Brass products are displayed on the walls of makeshift shops run by artisans who are largely from the Muslim community. “It is the work of our ancestors. Almost 80 per cent of the people here are associated with brass work,” says Hussain.

The alley where Hussain works is also home to namoonakars, artisans who craft wax prototypes for brass products. The neighbourhood hosts craft workshops of various kinds of brass work. Read: In Moradabad, it’s down to brass tacks

“I used to work with my father and uncles on astab-e-phooldaan, a large flower pot on which we used to draw intricate patterns,” he recalls. “In those days, items were exported to Russia.” He says that in his extended family there were as many as 50-60 men who worked as artisans. “Now, it is down to just eight or nine.”

An inherited occupation, sia kalam (named for the pen-like chisel used for engraving) has been passed down in families. “Many sia kalam artisans in the area have ustads [masters] who taught them the craft of engraving,” says Khursheed Ahmed.

It’s around five on a winter evening and three craftsmen are working on designs from memory. Khursheed Ahmed is doing the bharayi – filling petals with chiselled lines, part of a larger plan to make a jaali – intricate floral patterns akin to a latticed screen. “It’s the flowers and designs that change, the techniques remain the same,” he says.

He learnt engraving in 1957 when he was just 16, from his father, ustad Abdul Ameen. “I loved this work because of the floral designs and the respect it had,” he adds. In the 1950s, he recalls that there were few karigars (craftspeople) and a lot of demand. Now, he says, “there are too many skilled craftsmen all competing for the diminished amount of work.”

The master craftsman works with his two shagirds (students), Zahur Ahmad, 22, and Nusrat Ali, 35. “Initially, we are instructed on how to strike the thaapi on the kalam. We would do it till our master felt confident enough to give us more intricate work,” he says about his days as a young artisan when he was quickly scolded if he made a mistake. “Nobody wants to learn the same way now,” he laments. “It’s not the ustad [master] who teaches, [but] it’s the shagird [student] who learns. If you are passionate, you will learn it.”

Here in the Peerzada area of Moradabad, a city in Uttar Pradesh, it is mostly Muslim men who work on this and other crafts. Muslims in Moradabad constitute almost half the population (Census 2011).

Dilshad Husain lives a five-minute walk from Khursheed Ahmed and Irshad Husain. In his seventies, he has created and mastered many designs, including daali ka design – patterns with long branches and Rajasthani baraat – Rajputana murals on brass.

The work of marodi is considered the most intricate and difficult to master, and Dilshad takes pride in his skill; he gifted a black flower pot to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was impressed by his artwork in an exhibition in Lucknow in 2022. “Ab ghar ke kaam mein kya hi izzat, bahar log ise exhibitions mein dikhate hain [There is no value for this work here [in the home market]. Dilshad says he was particularly impressed by the work of Iranian carpets in an exhibition in Iran that he visited.

The master engraver has won multiple state and national awards including the Shilp Guru and the Padma Shri. Other artists are in awe of his work. Irshad Hussain says few craftsmen (like Dilshad) of marodi remain. He recalls his great grandfather who did intricate work.

Dilshad Hussain has retired and trains young artisans. “It’s the tiny details we train them with. The art form is first taught on a scrap,” he says. Once the artisans progress, they are trained in different techniques of hitting the chisel, sharpening the tools, and filing the metal.

But this art is not without its physical challenges. “This work you can only do for 10 minutes in the morning. Aankhen jawab de deti hain [After that, the eyes give up],” says Irshad Husain.

There is also the fine brass dust (called rava) that floats in the air and damages the eyes. “We have to position ourselves in such a way that the rava settles on our chest and not face,” says Mohammad Islam. In his forties, Islam has been an artisan for the last 30 years.

“There are mornings when we wake up and see these tiny particles settled in the corner of our eyes,” adds Islam. Sometimes they are able to remove it with their hands. It is collected and sent to a local furnace to convert back into brass ingots.

“Brass has become the new gold,” says Khursheed Ahmed. Today sia kalam work is down to a trickle, say the master craftsmen. The cost of raw brass has risen – a brass ingot typically weighs between seven to eight kilos, and costs around Rs. 500 a kilogram.

The rise in the cost of brass ingots has led to a fall in work for artisans who must get the adat [brass products] from contractors to do the engraving work. Their income depends on the number of brass products commissioned in a day. “We earn 20 rupees for one hour’s work,” Khursheed Ahmed told PARI.

Mohammad Islam says he can work on 15-20 simple brass products in a day, earning around Rs. 400. “If the work is more intricate – such as jaali or chuniya jaali – it's 500 rupees and we make only one a day,” says the 40-year-old artisan.

There is no written record of the different designs. Artisans either cross-hatch the metal surface, etching out patterns to enhance their prominence or employ file tools to file the metal surface, inducing a bulging effect that brings the patterns to life.

Wages depend on how intricate the work is. The lowest quality of design is ‘Japanese’ – named for the products that were exported to Japan – a simple design in which artisans create a chased depression in the metal with a sia kalam – a pattern with little detailing. “It’s is of such a low quality that you can learn it in 6 to 7 years,” adds Khursheed, dismissively. ‘Japanese’ artwork has visible strikes showing the outlines of a pattern such as flowers or petals, without details that give them texture.

“I am lucky to have work every day, but there are artisans for whom the work is in short supply,” Irshad Hussain says but adds that the wages are not enough to sustain his family. He has two children – a daughter Iqra who studies in Class 7 and a son Mohammad Asad a year younger. “I don’t want my children to learn this craft, to have the same fate as mine. It is up to them what they want to become when they grow up. But I want them to be educated, and earn good money,” Hussain says.

The craftsmen say that much of the pride in this work is overshadowed by financial insecurity. “There was a time – in the late eighties – when we used to go to the theatres. Miglani [theatre] was a famous one, but now they’ve all closed. Tickets were just 2 rupees and 45 paisa. I watched so many Amitabh Bachchan films there, and my favourite was Coolie.”

Husain says he no longer has the time and leisure to watch films. Even so, Amitabh Bachchan remains his favourite actor. His favourite actress he says, with a mischievous smile, “my wife!”

“It’s the tiny details that matter when you are learning sia kalam. For instance, you must know how much force you should strike the kalam with to get an etching of a certain size,” Zahur Ahmed explains, as he shows the outline of a petal on the adat in his hands.

Zahur Ahmed tried multiple lines of work, including sewing, cutting bangles, and meenakari (metal colouring) before learning to become a sia kalam artisan. The 22-year-old dropped out of school in Class 9, certain he did not want to study further.

“In the beginning, it is difficult to remember the patterns. I used to make patterns on a notebook first to remember it,” says Zahur. “It is a form of art,” says the young artist. The youngest among four siblings, he learnt sia kalam from his father and uncles.

“Even though I tried other work, I was always learning this because all my uncles and my father are karigars. I started learning it at the age of 10, but till today I cannot work on large jars and draw intricate patterns,” he says to emphasise the challenge of this skilled work.

Although incomes are low, artisans say their skills are revered in the community; master craftsmen are revered and given respect. Artisans acknowledge Dilshad’s contributions to the recognition of the craft, and banners are placed outside his house declaring his recognition on a national stage – including the Shilp Guru and the Padma Shri.

“Woh kaam aisa karte hain ki pradhan mantri bhi unse milta hai [The kind of work he does, attracts even the Prime Minister],” says Hussain about Dilshad. “Only a few can master that kind of work.”

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