Potted coolers

Narayan Singh sits at his 40-year-old store,puzzlingly called ‘Gora Kumbhar Matka Bhandar’,with an air of practiced nonchalance. “You are a good 15 days early. Come after April 1 st and you will see this place inundated with more pots. We will also be getting in some pots to cook vegetables in.” The little store brims over with breakables of all shapes and sizes. Tall and rounded pots with tiny pipes stuck to them hog most of the prime shelf space. There are tall elegant ones,with simple leafy designs on them,that have come from West Bengal and Assam. “Another brisk seller is the surai from Harayana,” points out Singh. Surai looks like a mini gargoyle,with a rotund body carrying embossing of flowers and foliage. A thin layer of copperish sheen covers them. The picture is completed by a tiny tiger/lion head protruding from the base. An innovative snout indeed!

In spite of the searing sunlight,work proceeds normally at this place. The glisten of water being poured into various containers is all around,as customers squint at and pat the wares with their knuckles. At his tin shack,Ashok Shinde sits looking intently into a pot he has just polished. “The sales are just picking up,as the heat gets more intense. The usual designs still are the best sellers,and we manage to sell around 20-25 a day.” The biggest one at this shop sells for Rs 250,while the most modest ones ask for Rs 80 each. “The shop besides this one (Singh’s) is my brother’s. He is an expert wholesale dealer and once in a while gets export orders,but that isn’t very regular.”

Further ahead,planted placidly on a tiny stool,is Kamal Kumbhar. Behind her,four family members are busy polishing pots and making earthen killas. “It’s all just starting now. The next four months are going to bring in good business,” she smiles. Her small counter doesn’t qualify as a store,but she has run it for the past 20 years. Right next to her is the the experienced shack of Kumar Shinde. Clad in a work-stained ganji and a scarf tied around his head against the heat,Shinde appears too busy to talk much. “Many pots come here from Wadgaon. There is no real export business as such,but the summer pots sell around 60-70 km periphery of the city,like Shirur,Narayangaon,and so on. What you see around here are the older forms of the water pots,there hasn’t been much change in their appearance this year.”