‘There’s always someone asking for a charpai’

When Bhagat Ram Yadav retired as a clerk from public-owned Haryana Roadways, he could have chosen a life of leisurely retirement. “But I felt a junoon [passion] inside me,” says the 73-year-old who was a model and decorated employee.

This passion made him seek out a craft he had been taught by his father Gugan Ram Yadav in his childhood – making charpais (string cots) and piddas (string stools).

His learning began over half a century ago when the young Bhagat, just 15 years old, sat alongside his three brothers, watching their father skillfully craft charpais for their home. His father owned 125 acres of land and dedicated the summer months—after the wheat harvest—to making these sturdy cots. He used handmade sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea), soot (cotton rope) and wood from sal (Shorea robusta) and sheesham (North Indian rosewood) trees. His place of work was their baithak, an open room where both people and cattle spent a large part of the day.

Bhagat Ram remembers his father as an “ek number ka aari” – a great craftsman – who was very particular about his tools. “My father encouraged us to learn the skill of making charpais. He would say, “come, learn this; it will help you later,” Bhagat Ram recalls.

But the young boys would instead run away to play football, hockey or kabaddi, evading what appeared to be tedious work. “Our father would scold us, even slap us, but we didn’t care,” he says. “We were more interested in getting a job. We only learned the skill out of fear of our father, often asking him how to move the rope to create a design when we got stuck.” 

When the time came to earn a living, Bhagat Ram secured a job, first as a conductor with a private bus service in Rajasthan and then as a clerk with the Haryana roadways in 1982. He says he adopted the principle of “never engage in any wrongdoing.” It earned him three awards, and he proudly wears one of the rings he received then. In December 2009, he retired at the age of 58. Though he briefly tried farming cotton on his 10 acre share of the family land, but the work was too demanding for his age. In 2012, he returned to the craft he had learnt as a teenager.

Today, Bhagat Ram who belongs to the Ahir community (listed as Other Backward Classes in the state), is the only charpai-maker in the village.

A resident of Dhana Khurd village in Haryana’s Hisar district, Bhagat Ram has a regular routine. Every morning, he wakes up at around 6 a.m. and fills two bags – one with bajra (pearl millet) and the other with chapatis. He then heads out to his fields, scattering the grains for pigeons and the chapatis for ants, dogs and cats.

“After that, I prepare my hookah and settle down for work at around 9 a.m.” Bhagat says. He works till noon unless he has an urgent order. “Then I’ll work again for another hour till around 5 p.m.” Sitting in his room on a string cot he has crafted, light is streaming in from the windows and his hookah is placed next to him; he occasionally takes a leisurely puff.

When PARI meets him on a cool and breezy July morning, Bhagat Ram is intently crafting a pidda placed over his lap. “I can finish this one in a day,” he says with quiet confidence. His hands move with practised precision, aligning the threads in a careful pattern along the warp (longitudinal) and the weft (transverse), wrapped on a wooden frame made of sheesham.

He says that he has noticed himself slowing down with age. “When I first returned to crafting charpais, my hands and body worked efficiently. Now, I can't work for more than two to three hours at a time.”

After completing one side, he rotates the stool to repeat the process, ensuring the pattern mirrors itself on both sides. “In a pidda, the bharae [filling] is done on both sides. This is what makes it strong and long-lasting. But most artisans don’t do it,” he explains.

Each time he completes the weft on one side, Bhagat uses a khuti or a thokna – a tool shaped like the hand – to align the thread. The rhythmic thak thak thak of the thokna, combined with the chan chan chan of the attached ghungroo (small metal bells), creates a symphony of sounds.

He had the thokna crafted by an artisan two decades ago in his village, with the carved flower and the ghungroos being his own additions to the tool.  He asks his two school-going grandsons to bring in more stools to show us and leans in to reveal his secret: he discreetly weaves about five ghungroos into every pidda he makes. Most of these are made of silver or brass. “I have loved the sound of the ghungroo since childhood,” Bhagat Ram says.

Each stool is crafted with a combination of at least two vibrant-coloured ropes.  “You won’t find such colourful piddas in the market,” he adds.

He orders ropes from a supplier in Mahuva town, Bhavnagar district, Gujarat. A kilo of rope costs him Rs. 330, including shipping charges. He mostly orders about five to seven quintals of ropes in different colours.

Some bundles of rope lie on the table behind him. When he gets up, he reveals his real collection – a wardrobe full of colourful ropes.

Handing over a piece, he asks us to feel how “mulayam” – soft – the rope is. Though he doesn’t know what material it is, he is certain it is unbreakable. And he has proof. Once, a customer doubted the quality of his string stools and cots. So, Bhagat challenged him to rip the ropes with his hands. Bhagat was proved right not once, but twice. Not just the customer, even a policeman named Sonu Pehlwan stepped up next and also failed.

In charpai-making, the rope’s durability is paramount. It forms the bed’s foundation, providing the necessary support and ensuring longevity. Any compromise in its strength could lead to discomfort or even breakage.

For Bhagat Ram, the challenge wasn’t just a test of the rope’s strength – it was a validation of his fine craftsmanship. When the police officer asked Bhagat what he wanted for winning the bet, Bhagat replied, “It is enough that you have acknowledged your failure.” But the officer bought him two large Gohana ki jalebis, Bhagat recalls, laughing and spreading his hands to indicate how big they were.

The police official wasn’t the only one who learned something that day – Bhagat Ram did too. Elderly women visiting the handicraft fair found that sitting on such low piddas was uncomfortable and caused their knees to ache. “They asked me to make piddas that are about 1.5 feet higher,” Bhagat Ram says, pointing to the taller ones he now crafts using a steel frame.

It has begun to rain, and his wife Krishna Devi quickly brings in piddas from the courtyard. The 70-year-old used to weave dhurries (rugs), but stopped about five years ago. She spends her day working in the house and taking care of the cattle.

Bhagat Ram’s sons Jaswant Kumar and Sunehara Singh have not followed in his footsteps.  Sunehara works as a typist at the Hisar district court, while Jaswant manages the family land where they cultivate wheat and vegetables. “One cannot survive on this art alone; since I receive a pension of Rs 25,000 per month, it is manageable for me,” he says.

Bhagat Ram prices piddas between Rs 2,500 - 3,000. He says the price is high because of his attention to detail. “Every element is carefully selected, including the pae [feet], which we buy from Hansi, eight kms away. We call it paedi, mota paed, or datt. We then have it carved and show it to our customers. Once they give their approval, I have it polished,” he says.

This same precision is applied when making charpais. The single-coloured cots take three to four days to finish, while a designer charpai may take up to 15 days to complete.

To make the charpai, leaving a foot of space inside the wooden frame, Bhagat Ram begins by securing the ropes horizontally along both sides, reinforcing them with two to three knots on each side. He then proceeds to tie the ropes lengthwise, creating the warps. Simultaneously, using a tool called a kunda, he applies a specific rope-tying technique called gundi to further strengthen the charpai.

“The gundi is necessary while making a charpai as it stops the ropes from becoming loose,” Bhagat Ram explains.

Once the warp ropes are set, he begins filling in the colourful ropes transversely to create designs. These ropes, too, are secured along the sides using the gundi. About 10 to 15 kilogram of ropes gets used in making a single string cot.

Each time he adds a different coloured rope, he connects the ends of the two and stitches them together with a needle and thread. Where a rope is ending, he also stitches it to the next using the same-coloured thread. “If I just tie a knot, it will prick like a channa,” he says.

Most of his inspiration for designing charpais comes from the carvings on old houses and paintings on walls in the village or when he visits his relatives in other parts of Haryana. “I take a photo on my phone and replicate them in my charpais,” says Bhagat Ram, showing the photo of a charpai on his phone that features a swastika and a chaupar board game design. Once a string cot or stool is made, its bae (side length bars) and sheru (side width bars) – made of wood from the sal tree, and pae (feet) made of sheesham, are adorned with tiny brass pieces.

The string cots Bhagat Ram makes are usually priced between Rs. 25,000 and Rs. 30,000, depending on the size – 8x6 feet, 10x8 feet or 10x10 feet. For each charpai or pidda, he keeps a daily wage of Rs 500, earning Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 a month. “Ye sarkar ka mol toh hai nahi, mere mann ka mol hai, [This is not the government's price; it’s my own price.]” Bhagat Ram says.

He has been on a mission to establish charpais in the government’s official list of handicrafts. “It is an appeal I have also made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video on a local news channel,” he says, proudly showing PARI the clip on his mobile phone.

He has been to the Surajkund Mela in Faridabad twice, a 200 km journey from his village, to display his craft at the annual handicrafts fair. But the first time, in 2018, he did not have an artisan’s card and was asked to leave by the police. But luck was on his side. A sub-inspector asked him for two charpais for the deputy superintendents. No one disturbed him after that. “Everyone said, ‘Tau toh DSP sahab ka bohot tagda jaankar hai [Uncle is well-connected with the DSPs],’ Bhagat smiles and says.

He discovered that charpais are not recognised as a handicraft by the Ministry of Textiles while applying for an artisan’s card. Local officials in Rewari suggested he pose as a dhurrie weaver for the card photo.

This was the card he took with him in 2019. While everyone appreciated his charpais at the fair, he was not eligible to participate in the contest or win an award for his handicraft. “I felt bad, since I also wanted to display my artwork and win an award,” Bhagat Ram says.

There is one particular order he cannot forget – a very large charpai measuring 12 x 6.5 feet that was customised for the year-long farm protests in 2021. (Read PARI’s full coverage here). Bhagat was asked to weave in kisan andolan (farmers’ protest) into the charpai.

He was paid Rs. 150,000 for the outsized charpai, weighing about 500 kilos. “I had to lay it out in the courtyard and work there because it didn’t fit in my room,” Bhagat says. This cot, ordered by Tasvir Singh Ahlawat, travelled with the Ahlawat group to the Dighal toll plaza in Haryana – a distance of 76 kms from Bhagat’s village.

His craftwork has also travelled to customers in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Karnataka.

“It is a shaunk [passion] – not everyone has it,” Bhagat Ram says, recalling how a cattle farmer in Haryana bought a charpai worth Rs. 35,000. “When I found out he is just a cattle farmer, I offered to return his money. But he declined, saying had it cost a lakh he still would have bought it.”

Meanwhile, Bhagat Ram has stopped attending the annual handicraft fair after his second visit there in 2019 because it doesn’t bring in much income. There is enough work available at home, and his phone is constantly buzzing with new orders. “There’s always someone calling, asking for a charpai or pidda,” Bhagat Ram says with a hint of pride.

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