Geetanjali Krishna: For whom the bells toll - daily

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When a baby was born, many decades ago, on the night of the Haj in a remote village, Nirona, in Kutch, it was decreed that his name could be Haji and nothing else.

And because the baby Haji's ancestors, as long back as his father's memory could stretch, made copper bells, it was decreed that he too could do nothing else but make bells. So he dropped out of school after studying until class two, and took up his family's craft.

Today, Lohar Haji Siddiq is a bell maker par excellence, with a 300-year-old tradition of bell making behind him. And every morning, he gives a quiet thanks to the heavens above that the bells, which only cattle herders (Gujjars) used earlier, to tie around the necks of their cattle, are now selling in metros and abroad for their decorative value too.

The craft of bell making, he told me, originated in the province of Sindh, but his ancestors carried it with them when they settled down in Kutch generations ago. It is a long and labour intensive process.

"The bells we make are made of five materials "" copper, iron, brass, wood and cotton," Siddiq explained. First, a rectangular strip of waste iron is hammered into a hollow cylinder.

Then, a second piece with a metal loop where the wooden tongue is later hung, is used to cap the cylinder. The iron bell is then dipped into a mixture of powdered brass and copper. The women of his family coat it in mud paste and bake it in a kiln. After it has cooled, the tongue "" a wooden rod "" is attached, and the metal-coated exterior is buffed to impart lustre to the finished product.

"Any artisan can make these bells. But to make them sound sweet "" well, now that is an art," said the old bell maker.

He described the time-consuming process, the endless tuning and hammering to get the note right. The sound of the finished bell depends on its shape, the size and shape of the wooden tongue, and on the curvature of its bottom rim.

"This is the thing that can't be taught. I just learnt it while growing up, and now my son Ali is doing the same!" said he proudly. He pointed out many of the smaller bells that Ali had made.

Ali dropped out from class eight recently in order to assist his father, and I asked the teenager how he's learnt the craft. He said, "Initially, I learnt to hammer out the basic body of the bell. Now I'm learning to coat it with copper and brass. It's not difficult for me, since

I've grown up seeing bells made." But then, he added with a grin, "I still make mistakes!"

His father makes just enough to support his family. Even then, Siddiq says he'd be happy if his other three sons followed Ali's example. "I earn about Rs 4,000 a month, sometimes more, selling bells," said he, "sometimes visitors to Kutch land up in my village workshop and buy bells."

Another source of income, he said was from agents of exporters, who often place orders for bells with him. "Apart from this, our regular customers are still those faithful Gujjars who've traditionally bought bells from us," said he.

Hung on doorways, round necks of cows or anywhere where they can sing and murmur to passers by, these rugged, handmade copper bells make their machine-made Chinese counterparts pale in comparison. And if Lohar Haji Siddiq has his way, there will soon be another generation of bell makers keeping this old craft alive.