Geetanjali Krishna: An artist's tale of woe

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Would I've been better-off as a rickshaw-puller or a farmer?" Kalika the master sculptor wondered, sitting amidst his intricately carved soapstone creations, "Or maybe I too should have left my village and gone to Delhi, Bombay or Surat, where they say there's work a plenty?"

For today, this wonderfully skilled craftsman, who can with a few deft nicks of a tool, turn a block of stone into a rearing elephant or a shy tortoise "" sits without any work, facing a bleak future.

"Business is so bad right now that I barely make enough to survive," he said. It's quite a comedown for someone with a lineage like his "" his ancestors were master craftsmen, carving ivory artefacts in the court of the king of Banaras.

"When ivory was banned, we began carving soapstone," Kalika said. His father trained the entire village of Ramnagar in Varanasi in the art of sculpting this soft stone.

"He taught me to always focus on getting the expressions right," Kalika said, showing me two intricately designed elephants "" one had a benign smile on his face, while the other was in a temper with his trunk raised in anger.

Each elephant had been painstakingly hollowed out to reveal a smaller elephant in his stomach.

"Working with soapstone is not easy," said he, showing me how he selected a block of stone, cut it to size and then chiselled it to create different forms. There was a lot of wastage, since he has to buy soapstone by the truckload and much of it is wasted while cutting.

"People in Varanasi don't understand that all this adds to the cost of my products," said he bitterly, "and most of the tourists who come here are so price-driven that they don't care whether the figurine they buy has a flat nose and three lips "" as long as it's cheap!"

But craftsmen like Kalika, whose creations are so intricate that they require two to five days to make, can't afford to sell themselves short. "If I can't even make Rs 100 a day using my skill, then I may as well work as a common labourer!" said he.

Until three years ago, Oxfam, the international aid agency, used to export many of Kalika's products. "Hundred men worked with me on their order for about 20,000 pieces in two months," said Kalika, "some cut the stone, others shaped it, and my brother and I would give it our finishing touches and embellishments."

Unfortunately, the order wasn't reissued after a few years and most of his men migrated to larger metros in search of better work. "My brother and I haven't had such a good order ever since," said he ruefully.

Business in Delhi and Bombay is equally hard to find. "For poor people like us, going to places like Dilli Haat, where artisans can sell their own products, is too expensive "" we need to cart all our products, which are heavy and breakable, then spend at least Rs 100 a day to stay somewhere and also need to shell out the money to rent a stall there!" said he.

Instead, he sits in his home in Ramnagar, sending his sons and daughters to school, and telling them any work is better than what their father does: "My twelve-year-old son has inherited my skills, and wants to draw and paint all the time. I dissuade him by saying that art might earn him his daily bread if he's lucky, but it certainly doesn't provide the butter to make it tasty!"