Sreelakshmi Prakash

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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Holding onto the trunk of a 10-foot idol of Lord Ganesha seated
on a throne, one arm raised in blessing, Shankar Mirdwad is adding the final
touches to it with clay. Coconut husk and sacks full of plaster are strewn around, next to
paint bottles, containers of rubber dye and idol frames. &quot;The POP is
missing from some portions,” Shankar says. “After that, the idol is ready to be
painted.&quot; 

The tarpaulin and bamboo shed where he is working is barely
visible behind an array of ready and in-progress idols on Mangalhat road in the bustling Dhoolpet locality of the old city of Hyderabad. Trucks and
tempos are moving like snails along the narrow lanes ferrying big and small
Ganesh idols – the biggest ones made here are 21 feet – covered in tarpaulin
and accompanied by cheering crowds of men, on their way to community pandals and homes.

Shankar has been working at this shed since the last week of
June. The owner, who
is out of town, runs three more such workshops, he says. In each, when I
visited in the last week of August, 2-3 artisans were busy readying the idols for
the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in the first week of September this year.

Another batch – the sculptors – had come to Dhoolpet’s worksheds
around January and left by April, as they do every year, Shankar explains. “In
our shop we call a Kolkata-based murtikar,” he says. “He makes the
idol with chini mitti [fine-grained soil]. It takes
around 25 days for the murtikar to complete a [big] idol.”

A few weeks later, Shankar and other artisans step in. He
explains the process: the sculpted clay idol serves as a template. Shankar and his
co-workers coat it with a rubber dye, which hardens into a sheath in around 10
days. It is then covered with liquid resin. Together, these coalesce into a mould
which is removed from the base idol. The mould is stuffed with plaster and husk
to make another idol. For tall idols, bamboo is placed inside to provide
support. The plaster hardens within 10-15 minutes. The mould is then removed.
Using clay, the workers fix any chipped portions. After that, the new idols are
painted and decorated according to the customers&#39; demands. 

This way, Shankar and the others in this workshop make, he says,
around 50 idols of each design – and a total of around 400 Ganesh idols during
season in the four workshops owned by Shankar’s employer. They make only big idols, 10 feet or more,
and depending on the design, each is sold for prices ranging from Rs. 15,000 to
Rs. 60,000.

Shankar, now 29, has been making idols for over a decade – of Ganeshs, Durga,
and other deities. He belongs to the Kumbhar caste, which traditionally
specialised in making pots. “I first came to Dhoolpet with my uncle when I was
16, during vacation after my tenth standard exam,” he says. “I did small jobs
like carrying things or helping with the paints.” He stayed for three months, earning
Rs. 3,500 a month.

Shankar’s family is in Varni village in Varni mandal of Nizamabad district of
Telangana,
around 180 kilometres from
Hyderabad. After that vacation, he went to study for a BA degree in a
college in nearby Nanded district of Maharashtra. “I left the course in the
second year,” he says. “I was the eldest in the family and it was my
responsibility to take care of them. 

Shankar’s three brothers (they don’t have sisters) are all
idol-makers. He and his wife Swati, who makes beedis for an income, have two daughters,
eight and three years old. His parents live with him, and are potters in the
village.

Sumit Kumar Jha

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Soon after leaving college, he returned to Dhoolpet. “Watching and
helping the other idol makers in their work, I too learned to make murtis. From then on, I have kept working as an idol-maker on contract
in different places like Kurnool,
Guntur, Nellore, Vijayawada, Hosur and Bangalore,” he says. “Earlier
there used to be work for all 12 months, but now I get this work only for eight
months. The
production has dropped in Dhoolpet with outside idols coming in the past 3-4
years.&quot;

Shankar says he is paid as much as Rs. 30,000 a month for his
two months of idol-making in Dhoolpet. “I contract directly with the owners and
they employ me because of my skill and pay me higher [amounts]. Beginners and
workers who stay in one place get paid less. I complete the work in lesser time
and more efficiently,&quot; he claims.

“After that, I go back to my village and take up any job that I
get. I work as a [house] painter or in eateries as an attendant, earning around
Rs. 600 a day,” he adds, standing on the throne with a spray gun to add white
paint to the face of a Ganesh idol. 

Like Shankar, many other workers from Telangana and other states
come to Dhoolpet’s idol workshops before the Ganesha and Dussehra festivals. During
those months, they stay in and sleep in the workshops. Among them is 22-year-old
Babban Dawlekar, from Badur
village in Biloli taluka of Nanded district. He has been coming here
in the first week of June for five years, and then returning to his village to
drive an autorickshaw. His father is an auto driver too, and mother is an anganwadi worker. “We start work at eight in the morning and it goes on
till midnight or later. There is no fixed time,” he says.

















Balvir Singh, 32, is from the Mangalhat locality itself and
employed in another workshop in Dhoolpet for 10 years. “I get 12,000 rupees a
month. But my working months have reduced to six or eight,” he says. “Dhoolpet’s
idols have lost their fame because of the growing popularity of idols made in
Maharashtra. Shops in Begum Bazar [around a kilometre away] sell them for lower
prices. I work as a watchman or [house] painter in Hyderabad for the remaining
months, but I don’t want to give this up. I am happy doing this work,” he says.

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Ganpath Munikwarar, 38, who works in a workshop owned by a murtikar in Dhoolpet, is heating the charcoal used to dry the idols in
the monsoon’s damp. He helps in polishing the idol with sandpaper and attaching the
hands and trunk. He has come here for the first time with his brother-in-law during
a break in agricultural work in his village, Doultabad, in Tanoor mandal of Adilabad  district
(now in the redrawn Nirmal district) of Telangana. There he is an agricultural
labourer, earning Rs. 250 a day; he also cultivates two acres of leased land. “I
have been working here since mid-July. I get paid 13000 [per month],” he says.
“From farming, I get around 50,000-60,000 a year. I grow soya, urad, tur, moong, jowar, chana… I don’t like this [idol-making]
job. I have to work at night too. Next year, I won’t come,” he says.

After he, Shankar and the other artisans have made the idols from
the moulds, the decorating begins. While they also do some of the painting, a different batch
of painters work in groups of 2-3 – one doing the face, another the hands and so on. “We start working from June,
two months before the [Ganesh] puja,” says 31-year-old Badri Vishal, who is
from Dhoolpet, holding a spray gun and a paint bottle. “It takes half a day [eight
hours] to paint an idol. We work on 5-6 idols at one time.” Badri has painted
idols for 15 years. “For the remaining months, I sell kites in wholesale which
I bring from Kanpur,” he says. “Here, I got a half-day off on Raksha Bandhan,
otherwise we don’t get any holiday for two months. The work has got easy with the
paint compressor machine [spray gun], but detailing takes up most of our time.
I don’t know how much I’ll get paid this time, it depends on the kind of work
we do.”

The eyes are the most difficult to paint. In the same workshop, 20-year-old
Shailendra Singh carefully uses
a brush to colour the eyes and forehead of Ganesh idols. “Two years ago, I started working as a painter
here,” he says. “I work for two months and for the remaining months I study [he
is trying to clear Class 12] and help my parents [in their dosa-idli stall in Dhoolpet]. I want to become the main painter who can
colour the eyes of Lord Ganesha. Colouring eyes is the hardest, it has to be done
in a way that devotees can feel that Ganeshji is looking at them from any angle
they stand.” 













With additional reporting
by Sumit Kumar Jha.

The designers of Dhoolpet’s deities

ধূলপেটের মূর্তিকরদের কথা

தூல்பெட் தெய்வங்களின் வடிவமைப்பாளர்கள்

धूलपेटच्या देवतांचे निर्माते

धूलपेट के देवताओं के मूर्तिकार

دھول پیٹ کے دیوتاؤں کے مورتی ساز

ଧୁଲ୍ପେଟର ଦେବତାମାନଙ୍କର ରୂପକାର

Dhoolpet

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The designers of Dhoolpet’s deities

An array of artisans, most of them migrants, come to Hyderabad months before the ongoing Ganesh Chaturthi festival to make idols, but say the work is not regular now due to cheaper items in the market

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