They bring the remover of obstacles to life

With Ganesh Chaturthi just round the corner, several mandals will be set up across the city. While each and every idol is a visual treat, the actual preparation takes weeks, sometimes months. It is only after working on dummy idols for months at end, that the sculptors master the art of making them and manage to do it well too.

TGS brings stories of some of these idol makers and the hardships that they have gone through. While some have quit jobs to make idols, others are carrying on the family traditions. For all of them, it is not only about the faith that they have in the deity but also the respect for the art of making, painting and designing the idols.

He turned his hobby into a profession

In Chintamand Jawari’s workshop hangs a small and really old picture of a Ganesh idol in black and white. Made by Ramprasad Kaushal, this picture for decades now has been a source of inspiration for Chintamand, who learned everything he knows about idol making from Ramprasad. Dressed in a white kurta and pajama with a Nehru cap, you will find Chintamand spending hours at an end working on various kinds of idols, moulding them to perfection. Learning the art when he was merely six or seven years old, education took a back seat for him as his interest in sculpting grew by the day.

“I strongly believe that you need to be in the right kind of mood to get the best out of yourself as a sculptor. If you like what you do, there will only be a few instances when you get bored. Eventually, neither your work is affected nor your ability to deliver the best,” says the 78-year-old. Following in his footsteps, his son Ganesh, who also began helping his father after his school from when he was 13 years old. It is something that he learned while observing his father work on it and practiced enough as a child since the materials were always available.

Going by the name Kala Jagat, the business has been running for more than five decades now. Working throughout the year, they not only make Ganesh idols but sculpt other deities as well. His two sisters, Rekha and Gauri, usually assist Ganesh. “This business is something that started off as a hobby for our father. Since I have always seen him do this and learned it from him early on, I decided to make a career out of it too. I got a diploma in sculpting and now help him run it,” he says. Come next year, his sisters’ children will also starting helping around and one will then find three generations working under the same roof, he adds.

Celebrating their golden jubilee

The Lanjhekar family was engrossed in work as we entered their little workshop in Kasba Peth. Making the idols from about six months prior to Ganesh Chaturthi, amongst their small team, of five people, they manage to create about 2000 idols. Even though it was initially just a business that sold readymade idols, today the family spends hours bent over their creations getting the detailing of every single idol correct.

“One should venture into this field only if you like it. Even though it was a family business, it was something that caught my brother Manohar’s and my attention so we have been able to stick with it. Our children too are involved because they like working on it, not because they have to,” shares Ganesh Lanjhekar, who shut down three of his other businesses to concentrate on this full-time. Manohar who had a full-time job also shifted to this after retirement.

Sourabh, who is Deepak’s son and in his final year of BCom, helps around the workshop before and after his college. His other son Siddharth, who is a musician, can also be found at the workshop almost throughout the day, helping around. They also have another partner Abhijit Jadhav, in this venture which goes by the name Lanjhekar Bandhu. “The one thing, we ensure no matter how engrossed in work we were, was to push our children to study and do this as something extra. The minute this job becomes a compulsion it will start showing in your work and that is not something you want,” adds Manohar.

Making idols came to his rescue

A retired military officer, a business man and a sculptor, Shyamrao Deshmukh has been many things. Hail and hearty even at 90, he is a source of inspiration for many. After he retired from his military service, which he tells us he didn’t like much, he got involved in a truck business that failed miserably. For a while he even lived on the streets and could barely make ends meet. Merely through observation, he learned how to sculpt idols and soon enough with Rs 15 in his wallet but with the will power and determination to survive, he started making idols. This was his story about 40 years ago. Today, his sons Rajendra and Bhalchandra look after the idol making business which has expanded over the years. Going by the name Natraj Arts, they now make close to 6,000 idols every year and do a lot of painting jobs too.

When we asked Shyamrao if we could click his picture while he painted one of the idols, he says, “I don’t like getting clicked at all. This business is something that worked in my favour when I needed something to go right. The fact that I did this for so long, and that my children do it too, is a huge reward for the struggle that I have been through,” he says. His son Rajendra is a science graduate, while Bhalchandra graduated in Commerce and holds a Diploma in Pharmacy. Both learned the art when they were seven or eight years old and are now entirely dedicated to developing and flourishing the business.

“We continue to learn something new every day. Bhalchander and my children also help us out and we have about 40 other workers at our three workshops in Penn, Dhairi and Shukravar Peth. There is something to learn from everyone so even though we have been doing this for a long time there is always a way to make the idols look better,” Rajendra says. Alongside this they also run a pharmacy and have a fabrication business.

From an illustrator to a sculptor

As a young boy, Nilesh Parsekar would often find his father Pandurang come home from his service in the ammunition factory and spend hours sculpting idols. He loved watching his father work with the tools and painting the idol after, and he too soon learned how it was done. His elder brother Deepak and he started helping their father early on. While Nilesh went on to become an illustrator for a while, before switching to this full-time, his elder brother concentrated on lending a helping hand to their father. Set up in 1948, their business is one of the oldest in the city and over the years has expanded tremendously.

“I was five when I made my very first idol. It was an ecstatic feeling to see the finished idol. Even though it might have not been the best, for me it was a masterpiece. When I decided to quit my job as an illustrator, it was not a very difficult choice, simply because this is also something that I had grown to love,” says Nilesh. Apart from the regular traditional Ganpati idols that they make at their workshop in Katraj, which are mostly made from clay, they also sometimes just make the ornaments that might adorn other sculptures. They have been making the Kasba Peth Ganpati for the last 16 years.

Carrying on the family business

From his grandfather to his father and then to him and his son, the hobby and profession of making idols has been passed down. Growing up in an environment where round the year idols took up all the corners of the house, Santosh Kumbhar made his first Ganpati idol when he was 13 years old. It has now been 20 years that he has been sculpting, designing and painting the idols. One would often find him after his school curled up in a corner engrossed in painting the idols, concentrating so as to not make a mistake. Other than watching his father work on the idols every day, he learned quite a bit through trial and error too.

“Even though this is a family business and I had to take it up because there was no one else to look after it, I don’t think I do it out of any sort of compulsion. Had I been introduced to the art form even otherwise I would have probably taken it up,” confesses Santosh, as he looks up for a minute from the idol that he was painting. With barely enough space to work, his workshop in Karve Nagar is full of idols, some finished, some waiting for the final touches. While there are only the smaller idols here, the bigger ones are stored away in another place near Poona Hospital which is where they’re sold.

Catering to a lot of customisations in terms of designs and colours, every idol in the workshop has a small tag on it with a detailed description of how it must look. After the movie Bajirao Mastani, the craze to have an idol that replicates the Bajirao look is the in thing this season, he tells us.

The entire process is handled by the family members themselves as even his wife, Sheetal and son Sanket who is in his first year at Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalaya, help him out. They start working for the Ganpati season about four to five months in advance and make about 1,500 idols during this time.

salonee.mistry@goldensparrow.com

Originally published on The Golden Sparrow