Society  
Breaking Tradition's Clay Feet
by Surekha Kadapa-Bose

The making of idols and the images of deities was for a long time an exclusive male dominion. Men made and worshipped deities; women were not allowed to participate in any of the rituals. And so it was with Lord Ganapati, the Elephant God, whose worship was, until recently, an exclusively male preserve. The popular belief used to be - still is, in fact, in many homes - that women are impure when they menstruate and that God cannot be worshipped by the impure. Even today, women do not enter the temples or offer prayers when they are menstruating.

Matters had begun changing gradually in the early 20th century, with women being permitted to prepare puja ingredients, sing some bhajans and decorate the altar. Since the final decade of the 20th century, however, women have been playing a larger role: today, not only are purohitas (women priests) becoming more common, so are women Ganapati idol-makers.

Among the best known such Ganapati idol-makers in and around Mumbai are the mother-daughter combines Suhasini-Sangeeta Ghadigoankar, Rasika-Shalaka-Tejashree Kale, Usha-Shilpa Harmalkar and sisters Snehlata-Nikita Bilaye.
Says Usha Harmalkar, 40, giving the final touches to a four-foot-tall Ganapati idol, "Our Ganapati karkhana (factory) was started by Laxman Harmalkar, my late father-in-law, at Girgaum [in central Mumbai, the old mill-workers locality now dominated by middleclass Maharashtrians]. After his death in 1997, my husband, Vishwanath, couldn't handle the load of work alone. So he started teaching me our family business; he taught me everything from the selection of clay, the making of moulds, to using paints. After his demise a couple of years ago, I have taken over the entire business. Now, Shilpa, my daughter (a commerce graduate who also works as an assistant to a finance director in a nearby company), and my son, Amit, help me. I like to work with my hands."

Shraddha Ghadigoankar, who took up idol-making to help her husband, Prakash, is a hands-on worker who keeps her distance from giant-sized idols. "We don't make them. We prefer to work with clay, whereas the large idols are made of Plaster of Paris."

Hailing from Kalyan, a far-flung suburb on Mumbai's central railway stretch, Rasika Kale, 48, and her two daughters, Shalaka, 20, an undergraduate, and Tejashree, 14, are quite possibly the only women Ganapati idol-sculptors in the Thane belt. The Kale women have defied the 136-year-old Ganapati idol-making tradition even in conservative Pen, where half of all idols for Maharashtra are made. Earlier, women would only do superficial work, such as painting ornaments and clothes.

"I was always interested in making Ganapati idols," says Kale. "Even before marriage, I used to help my husband, Ravindra, in his workshop." Ravindra adds, proudly, "Rasika learnt the entire art within two years, and now she has also trained our two daughters."

Like Usha Harmalkar, the Kale women learned the craft from scratch - from fashioning rubber moulds to mixing clay to making handmade idols and painting them. Once the 10-day Ganesh festival begins, these women visit other workshops in Kalyan, Dadar, Vasai and Pen. "We discuss what changes we should incorporate for the next year," says Rasika Kale.

Nikita and Snehlata Bilaye, who have a century-old family workshop at Thakurdwar in Girgaum, have been making idols for seven years - the first generation of women to have taken to the vocation. Both women are graduates but prefer the 12-hours-a-day grind of idol-making to working in an office.

"We enjoy creative work and have to work for five to six months of the year," they say. "Only for a month or so do we put in nearly 12 hours of work a day. The rest of the time, we are free. Here, our parents meet all our needs, from buying movie tickets to clothes. A couple of years ago, we all had gone to Singapore and Bangkok for a vacation. Which other job will give us so much satisfaction?" Not only do they avoid local commuting, they work only with clay and circumvent health hazards since clay is chemically safe. Plus, it is delivered straight from Gujarat to their doorsteps.

None of their patrons has any objections to buying idols made by women. "Why should they?" ask the Bilaye sisters. "They want beautiful-looking idols, and they get them. We never compromise on the material, paint and the craftsmanship of our idols."

Says Ghadigaonkar, "And we don't like to entrust our work to laborers. We want only family members to be part of our work."

Each family hand-makes 150-200 idols a year, with joint families managing 400-500 idols of heights ranging from two feet to about seven feet. The idols cost between Rs 350 and Rs 2,500, depending on size and amount of decoration.
Most workshops are located on the ground floor. Mumbai's heavy monsoon often plays havoc with the idols, some of them nearing completion. All the idol-makers lost huge amounts of money, not to mention effort, in the 2005 deluge that killed more than 800 people in Mumbai alone. But life and worship go on, and they were back to idol-making as soon as the rains withdrew their ferocity.

Lalbaug's Suhashini Ghadigoankar, a doyen of sorts at over 60 years of age, had learnt the art from her father when she was barely 10. She now works at a karkhana set up by her husband, Bhau, a millworker who was very impressed by her talent. Now, her daughter Sangeeta, 25, also works along with her.

"I am just a medium," says Ghadigoankar. "It's Ganapati bappa who makes us do this work. And the happiest day will be the day when my daughter starts her own karkhana."   

September 24, 2006

By arrangement with Women's Feature Service 

Top | Society  

The Week of September 24, 2006          
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The New Womanomics by Sreedevi Jacob
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Breaking Tradition's Clay Feet by Surekha Kadapa-Bose 
Yohhh! Boloji by Dr. Amitabh Mitra 
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