He suddenly becomes pervasive, almost as soon as the train pulls into west Delhi’s Tagore Garden Metro station. His numerous heads, in various stages of completion, stand bunched together on the pavements. The limbs, mostly painted black, lie atop balconies, roofs and any other sizable flat surface available in the closely-packed houses. His torsos, of mainly the same tapering, cylindrical shape but many different sizes, are crammed together wherever space can be found, although the street dividers under the elevated Metro track are a particular favourite.
In the days before Dussehra, Titarpur, a usually nondescript village in the national capital, throbs with a final spurt of activity surrounding its one celebrated annual produce: the effigies of Ravan, the lord of Lanka.
On a side-street pavement piled high with massive paper-lined faces of Ravan, 35-year-old Kishan Mahato works with a certain rhythm, alongside his two assistants. One, 22-year-old Amit Kumar, sits on a set of stairs, diligently applying a homemade adhesive from a large aluminum vessel onto shiny golden paper. Mahato and his other assistant, Vijay Sahni, then delicate grab the flaccid sheets and lay them across the khaki-colour paper that makes up the base layer of Ravan faces. The seemingly fragile face is shifted many times, even as the two constantly shuffle around it, till finally every inch of it is covered in gold. It is painstaking work, but the rewards of crafting evil are tangible.
“We start our work about two months before Dussehra,” says Mahato who came to Delhi from Bihar’s Begusarai some two decades ago and eventually found work in the alleys of Titarpur making effigies. There are many more like him here who turn into craftsmen for these weeks and work other odd jobs through the rest of the year.
“First, the bamboo is bought, then it is cut up and the frames of Ravan are made using wire. For the torso, we line it with cloth and then use paper. For the face, only khaki paper is used initially, with the coloured sheets coming on later,” he explains. “All the parts are made separately, and eventually assembled together.”
For all massive effigies that are made here, the production cost and infrastructure is barebones. Almost everything is made by hand, with a team of three people able to produce upwards of ten Ravans, with the exact number depending on size. Skilled craftsmen like Mahato lead the crew and pay other artisans like Sahni based on their experience and skill. Apprentices such as Kumar are paid about Rs 300 for eight-hour shifts, with meals and tea thrown in for free.
Input costs, too, are minimal, although inflation is having an impact. The prices of bamboo, bought here in bundles of 20, for instance, have risen from Rs 800 per bunch about five years ago to Rs 1,200 currently, and those of paper, too, have increased. Despite that, all together, craftsmen say, the cost of building a 15-feet-tall Ravan is still less than Rs 1,000.
The price of these effigies, on the other hand, is about Rs 200 per foot. So, for a 15-feet-tall Ravan sold at the best price, there is a substantial profit of Rs 2,000 to be made — and craftsmen like Mahato claim to make a seasonal earning of about Rs 40,000. That is exactly why ‘Shankar Ravanwala’, as he introduces himself, chooses to ignore his scooter repairing shop for the eight weeks leading up to Dussehra to concentrate solely on making these combustible models. A veteran of 13 years, the local Titarpur mechanic-turned-Ravanwala says he has seen the business grow from some 30 effigy-makers a decade ago to more than 60 today, churning out about 1,300 Ravans every autumn.
“People who used to buy three Ravans are now buying one, but more and more of them are being built here,” says Shankar, who learnt the craft from scratch by watching others. “There’s clearly a profit to be made, so everyone is gambling by making more but the problem is that there may not be enough customers anymore.”
The buying itself starts about two weeks before the festival, with customers “booking” their effigies with individual craftsmen for collection later, explains Mahato. But with the sheer numbers of Ravans on offer growing every year and the number of customers remaining stagnant at best, the distress sales that craftsmen are forced into on the last few days hurts them the most. From a small cottage industry that a certain Ravan Baba of yore is said to have established some half a century ago, oversupply is slowly becoming Titarpur’s biggest threat.
Yet, young men like Kumar, who came here from Bihar’s Saharsa district following his brother, continue to join the trade in the hope of becoming master craftsmen and making the money that comes with it. At a time when their artist brethren elsewhere, particularly the idol makers of Kolkata’s Kumartuli, find themselves facing a bleak future, the ‘Ravanwalas’ of Delhi are proving, peculiarly, that good doesn’t always triumph. Instead, evil may well be more lucrative.
