Shreya Kanoi

Gagan Narhe

Photographs

Priti David

Editor

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“The people of West Bengal are unable to make a duli.”

Baban Mahato says this in a matter-of-fact tone about the gigantic dhaan dhorar duli that he crafts – upto
six feet tall and four feet wide – to store paddy. 

Just in case we didn’t catch it the first time,
the craftsman from neighbouring Bihar adds, “making a duli is not easy.”  He goes
to reel off the many stages: “There is a lot of work starting from kanda sadhna, kaam sadhna, talli bithana,
khada karna, bunai karna, teri chadhana [preparing the longitudinal bamboo
slips and horizontal slips, laying the circular framework, making the basket
stand, weaving it to completion, and putting in the finishing interlacements].”

The 52-year-old Baban has been doing
this for the last four decades. “Since my childhood my parents taught me only this
work. They did only this work. All Bind people make the duli. They also make tokris
[smaller baskets], catch fish, and row the boat.” 

Baban is from Bihar’s Bind community,
listed as Extremely Backward Class (EBC) in the state (Caste Census 2022-23).
Most duli craftsmen, he says, are
from the Bind community, but it is also done by people from the Kanu and Halwai
communities (also EBC), who have picked up the skill after decades of living in
close proximity to Bind people. 

“I work with the estimation of my
hand. Even if my eyes are closed, or it&#39;s dark outside, the intelligence of my
hands is enough to guide me,” says Baban. He begins by slicing a horizontal
cross-section of the bamboo, splitting it into 104 pliable strips, a task
calling for great dexterity. Then using precise calculations, the circular
bamboo framework is laid out measuring “chay
ya saat haath [roughly 9 to 10 feet]&quot; in diameter, depending on the desired
volume. A ‘haath’ is the measure of
the hand from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow, widely used by artisan
groups across India as a unit of measurement; it roughly equals 18 inches.

PARI is speaking to Baban in
Alipurduar district (earlier Jalpaiguri). It is 600 kilometres from his home in
Bihar’s Bhagwani Chhapra from where he travels annually to the northern plains
of West Bengal for work, arriving in the month of Kartik (October-November) when the kharif paddy crop is ready for harvest. He will stay on for the
next two months, making and selling the duli.


He’s not alone. “Every haat [weekly market] in the Alipurduar
and Cooch Behar districts of Bengal has duli
makers from our Bhagwani Chhapra village,” says Puran Saha. He too is a duli maker who annually migrates from
Bihar to the Dodear haat in
Khagrabari town in Cooch Behar district. Most migrants arriving for this work
team up in groups of five to 10. They choose a haat and set up base there, living in makeshift tents. 

Baban first arrived in West Bengal
when he was 13 years old. He came along with his guru, Ram Parbesh Mahato. “I
have accompanied my guru on his travels for 15 years. Only then have I been
able to understand it [making a duli] fully,” says Baban, who also comes from a family of duli craftsmen.

Baban starts the day by lighting a
fire. It&#39;s too cold to sleep inside his makeshift home, so he chooses to sit by
the fire on the road outside. “I wake up at 3 a.m. everyday. I feel cold at
night. Because of the cold, I get out of my bed, light a fire outside and sit
by it.” An hour later he starts work, and although it’s still dark outside, the
dim street light is enough for him to begin. 

He says that integral to the process
of making the duli basket is the
selection of the right kind of bamboo. “A three-year-old bamboo is the best for
this purpose because it can be easily split, and it is suitably thick,” says
Baban. 

Laying the circular bamboo framework
using the right calculations is tough, and he uses a tool called dao (sickle). For the next 15 hours he
will only break for meals and a bidi
(smoke). 

A typical duli is 5 feet in height and 4 feet in
diameter. Baban can make two duli baskets
a day with the help of his son, and sell them in the weekly Mathura haat on Mondays in Alipurduar district.
“When I go to the haat, I carry duli in
various sizes: to hold 10 mann, 15 mann, 20 mann, 25 mann paddy.” One
mann equals 40 kilograms, so a 10 mann duli
can hold 400 kilos of paddy. Baban customises duli sizes for his customers based on the weight they want it to
hold. The duli sizes may vary from 5
to 8 feet in height based on the volume.

“When the harvest season begins, we
get 600 to 800 rupees for a duli.
When the season is ending, the demand is less so I sell the same thing cheaper.
For an additional earning of 50 rupees, I will deliver the basket as well,” he
says.

One duli weighs eight kilos and Baban can carry as many as three dulis (weighing roughly 25 kilos) on his
head. “Can I not carry the burden of 25 kilos on my head for some time?” he
asks, adding that it’s not a big deal.

As Baban walks
through the weekly haat where he sets
up shop, he nods to his fellow villagers from Bihar, and points to the shops
that belong to the members of his community, and also the local Bengalis who
are helpful. “Sab jaan pehchaan ke hain.
[All the faces are familiar],” he says. “Even if I don’t have a single penny,
and I look for rice, dal, and roti, they will give it all,
irrespective of whether I have the money or not,” he adds.

His nomadic life has given him a
fluency beyond his native Bhojpuri. He speaks Hindi, Bengali and Assamese, and
understands Mechiya – the language of the Mech community who live in his
neighbourhood in Dakshin Chakoakheti, Alipurduar district (earlier in Jalpaiguri
district).

He says he buys a couple of shots of
alcohol for Rs. 10 a day as, “all the hard labour makes my body sore. The
alcohol makes it easier by numbing the pain.” 


Although his fellow Biharis live
together, Baban prefers to live by himself: “If
I have to eat for 50 rupees, and there are people along with me, they will say,
‘I want my share!’ That is why I choose to eat alone, and stay alone. That way
whatever I eat is mine, whatever I earn is mine.”

He says there are few
livelihood opportunities in Bihar for Bind people, and so they have been
migrating like this for generations. Baban’s 30-year-old son, Arjun Mahato has
also travelled with him when he was young. Now he works in Mumbai as a painter.
“Our home state Bihar does not have enough for securing an income. Sand mining
is the only industry here…and all of Bihar cannot be reliant on that.”

Chandan, the youngest of Baban’s eight
children, has accompanied him this year (2023). They have set up a makeshift
home near National Highway-17 that runs from West Bengal to Assam, past tea
gardens. Their home is a garage with loosely draped tarpaulin on three sides,
and a tin roof, a mud chulha (stove),
a bed and some storage space for the duli
baskets. 

The father and son use open spaces by
the road to defecate; for bathing, they take water from the hand pump nearby.
“I have no problems staying in these conditions. Mein hamesha apne kaam ke sur mein rehta hoon [I am always in the
rhythm of my work],” says Baban. He makes and sells duli in the outer section, and cooks and sleeps in the inside. 

When it’s time to
leave and go back home, the bamboo craftsman says it&#39;s a painful parting: “Maa, my landlady, has packed me a bunch
of home-grown tej-patta [bay leaves] from her garden to take home.”

The arrival of plastic sacks to store paddy, and
changing patterns of processing and storage are impacting the livelihood of the
duli makers. “Our work has taken a
hit in the last five years because of upcoming rice mills in the area. The
farmers sell their paddy to the mills directly from the fields for further
processing, instead of storing it like before. People have also begun to use a
lot of plastic sacks for storage,” a group of duli makers from Bihar tell PARI.

Making other, smaller sized baskets (tokris) is a possibility, but they want
to keep the peace with the locals who also make it, and have requested them, ‘dekho bhai, yeh mat banao, apna bada wala
duli banao.. Humlog ka pet mein laat mat maro” [brother, please don’t make
the small baskets. You make your big baskets. Don’t take our livelihood away
from us’].

At the haats in Cooch Behar and Alipurduar districts, a basta (plastic sack) is Rs. 20 for a piece, while a single duli
is priced at between Rs. 600 to 1,000. The
basta can hold 40 kilos of rice, whereas a typical duli can hold 500 kilos of rice.

Sushila Rai is a paddy farmer who
prefers a duli. The 50-year-old from
Dakshin Chakoyakheti village in Alipurduar says, “if we store the paddy in a
plastic sack, it gets infested with black bugs [rice weevils]. So, we use the duli. We keep a large stock of rice for
personal consumption for the year.”

West Bengal is the
largest producer of rice in the country (13 per cent of India’s total rice
production) with 16.76 million tonnes annually in 2021-22 says this <a href="https://agriwelfare.gov.in/Documents/CWWGDATA/Agricultural_Statistics_at_a_Glance_2022_0.pdf">report</a> of the Department of
Agriculture and Farmer Welfare.

The migrant Baban will spend
mid-October to December in West Bengal, and then return home to Bihar for a
short hiatus. Come February, he will leave for the tea estates in Assam and
spend the next six to eight months of the tea picking season there. “There is
no place in Assam where I haven’t been to... Dibrugarh, Tejpur, Tinsukia,
Golaghat, Jorhat, Guwahati,” he reels off names of big towns and cities. 

The bamboo baskets he makes in Assam
are referred to as dhoko. In relation
to the duli, the dhoko is much smaller in height – all of three feet. These are used
while picking tea leaves. He makes as many as 400 baskets in a month, often on
order from tea estates who provide accommodation and bamboo while he is at
work. 

“Baans
ka kaam kiya, gobar ka kaam kiya, maati ka kaam kiya, kheti mein kaam kiya, ice
cream ka bhi kaam kiya…[I have done bamboo work, I have done clay work, I have
worked in cow dung, I have been practising agriculture, and I even sold
ice-creams for a living.]” says the versatile Baban, describing his work
through the year. 

If basket orders in
Assam fall short, he makes a detour to Rajasthan or Delhi and sells ice creams
as a street vendor. There are other men in his village who do the same, so he
hops onto the bandwagon when necessary. “Rajasthan,
Delhi, Assam, Bengal - my whole life is spent between these places,” he says.

Despite his decades as a craftsman,
Baban is not registered and does not have a <a href="https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1945169#:~:text=Registered%20artisans%20with%20Pehchan%20card,CHCDS)%20of%20Ministry%20of%20Textiles">artisan identity card</a> (Pehchan card) issued by the Office of
the Development Commissioner of Handicrafts (under the Ministry of Textiles).
It gives the artisan a formal identity to avail of various government schemes
and access to loans, pension, eligibility for awards recognising craftsmanship,
as well as skill upgradation and infrastructure support. 

“There are lots of us [craftspersons], but who is bothered about the poor? Everyone is after their own
pockets,” says Baban, who doesn’t even have a bank account. “I have brought up
my eight children. Now, for as long as I can muster the energy, I will earn and
eat. What do I want more than this? What [else] can one do?”This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).

The Bihari bamboo basket maker

بانس کی ٹوکری بنانے والے بہاری کاریگر

பிகாரின் மூங்கில் கூடை செய்பவர்

ਬਿਹਾਰੀ ਬਾਂਸ ਟੋਕਰੀ ਨਿਰਮਾਤਾ

ବିହାରୀ ବାଉଁଶ ଝୁଡ଼ି କାରିଗର

बांबू टोपलीचा निष्णात बिहारी विणकर

ബിഹാറിയായ മുളങ്കൊട്ട നെയ്ത്തുകാരൻ

ಬಿಹಾರಿ ಬಿದಿರಿನ ಬುಟ್ಟಿ ತಯಾರಕ

બિહારના વાંસની ટોપલી બનાવનારા

बांस के टुकना बनेइय्या बिहारी कारीगर

बिहार के दुली वाला बब्बन महतो

বিহাৰৰ ডুলি নিৰ্মাতাসকল

बांस की डुली बनाने वाले बिहारी कारीगर

বাঁশের ঝুড়ির ওস্তাদ বিহারী কারিগর বাবন মাহাতো

Alipurduar

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The Bihari bamboo basket maker

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