No, Kumartuli’s Durga idols are not always made by men

Women who entered Kumartuli workshops

When artisan China Pal took over her father’s idol-making shop after his death more than two decades ago, it was unheard of for a woman to work as lead idol artisan. Pal, 47, not only faced immense opposition from male artisans but also from her father’s employees, who were reluctant to work for a woman.

The Kumartuli neighbourhood is a maze of narrow lanes and bylanes, densely packed with workshops. The lack of space means artisans are compelled to occupy pavements and space outside their workshops with idols and other wares.

“The men would harass me if I kept anything outside my shop on the street although they were doing it themselves. But because I was alone, they were able to pick on me. Sometimes my eyes would fill with tears, but I just kept quiet and kept working. Now, I am not afraid of them,” says Pal. The male artisans, Pal says, would question how a woman was able to run a workshop without a man’s assistance and supervision.

Mala Pal and Kakoli Pal, two women unrelated to each other, work in small workshops a few meters apart, deep inside one of the many bylanes in Kumartuli. Mala, 34, entered the business of idol-making as a 14-year-old. “When I started learning how to make idols, the established male artisans in the area said women were not allowed to come into this business. They said idol-making was a labour-intensive and a physically challenging art and that is why women weren’t permitted to participate. But I liked it,” says Mala.

Her father was an established artisan in Kumartuli but he did not want his daughter to learn the trade. The workshop Mala works in today belonged to her father and she remembers growing up watching him make idols. “Even my father used to say that this was a profession for boys, not girls. I am talking about the year 1985. ‘Why will girls come into the shops?’ But I didn’t listen to anyone.”

Almost all the artisans of Kumartuli for whom this is a family business, have the last name Pal and this has been the custom for centuries. The term ‘pal’ identified their profession⁠—people who worked with clay.

Mala was lucky to have an older brother who recognised his sister’s talent and encouraged her to pursue the art. “Sometimes we ate only one meal a day,” she says, recalling how her family of six brothers and sisters and her mother faced severe financial problems after her father’s death. “My older brother took on another job along with idol-making to make ends meet after my father’s death. When I started working in the shop at age 14 and we got more orders for idols, the financial problems lessened. Now I ship idols to clients in Germany & London.”

Kakoli Pal stands in front of an idol that she has made. (Photo: Neha Banka)

Shipping their art around the world

The Bengali expatriate community around the world celebrates the festival of Durga Puja with pomp similar to that in India and they place orders for idols through middlemen months in advance of the festival, to be shipped overseas to various countries. The artisans work around the clock to ensure that the idols are shipped out of Kolkata, bound for their overseas destinations weeks in advance to be delivered in time for the festival.

“I had heard of (other) women artisans in Kumartuli but I like her idols the best. She stood out and showed…people that when you have the determination and dedication…perseverance, then you can achieve anything despite male chauvinism prevalent in society, and that is what she did,” says Subhomit Laha, a college student who had placed orders for a Durga idol with Mala Pal last year.

Kakoli Pal, 41, has been making Durga idols for 16 years and entered the business of idol-making due to financial necessity. “My husband died suddenly of a brain stroke and due to the circumstances, I was forced to enter the business. I didn’t know much (about idol-making) when I entered the profession but then due to work pressures, I picked it up,” says Kakoli. Her workshop is a small, cramped space where she works with a team of two to three assistant artisans, one of the smaller shops in the neighbourhood. Like other artisans in Kumartuli, idol-making is her only source of income and helps pay for the education of her two daughters.

Subhomit Laha’s idol being carried out of Mala Pal’s workshop in Kumartuli. (Photo: Neha Banka)

When her husband died 16 years ago, Kakoli’s younger daughter was only one year-old and Pal was forced to leave the infant with neighbours while she toiled in the workshop. “Some male artists taught me because I didn’t know much about idol-making when I first started. I have also faced a lot of problems but there was nothing to be done. I had no male guardian over my head and people tried to take advantage of that situation,” recalls Pal.

Social barriers and obstacles in Kumartuli

Although perceptions and attitudes towards women artisans are changing, change comes slowly to these parts. “There were also people who were envious that being a woman, I was single-handedly making so many idols. ‘A woman is making so many idols? Then what are we, as young male artists, worth?’ they would say,” recalls Pal. She believes that the envy stems from how much she has single-handedly achieved without the active support of a male family member and how she was able to expand her husband’s business after his death.

The more barriers that the women artisans break, an equal number threaten to bind them. Despite being bread-winners in their families and lead artisans in their workshops, the women are also bound by daily household chores that they are compelled to juggle with their idol-making due to gender constructs in force. “I have to do everything in my shop. From cooking and grocery shopping to buying fabric for the idols—I have to buy even that. Who is going to help me?” says Kakoli Pal, standing outside her workshop. “There is nobody to do anything. Whatever has to be done, has to be done by me. I will do this till I am alive. Even if I have to go to war to do this, I will still do it.”

The artisans live in rooms behind their workshops or in low-hanging open attics above their workspace. Others have rooms in small bylanes close to workshops where they live with their families. The proximity of their homes helps because in the run-up to the festival of Durga Puja, the work pressure increases and the artisans end up working all day and all night to finish the idols in time for the festival. During the afternoons, when fewer customers stop by, the artisans rest on a straw mat laid out on the floor of their workshops.

Artisans work on one of China Pal’s larger idols. The idol’s size means that it won’t fit inside the workshop and has be made outside on the pavement. (Photo: Neha Banka)

Getting the idols just right

The art of idol-making is a labour-intensive job and artisans spend hours perfecting the idols’ features and shape. Wet clay, called Ganga mati in Bengali, is brought in large quantities in carts from the nearby Hooghly river and dumped in corners of the bylanes of Kumartuli. The wet clay is beaten and kneaded with hands and feet over several stages to smoothen it to the right consistency and texture before it gives shape to the gods of Bengal. Bamboo and bundles of straw form the framework of the idols and the artisans spend weeks plastering wet clay onto the structures in stages, before leaving it to dry in the trickles of sunlight that seeps through the plastic coverings above the workshops and through small windows and narrow doors.

The business is also extremely competitive with artisans racing to make the idols at the fastest speeds and in innovative designs, because prize-winning idols mean recognition and financial rewards given by the West Bengal state government and by private enterprises in the city. Since Durga Puja is the biggest religious festival in the state, the city and state government and private companies sponsor idols of the deities and pandals, temporary bamboo structures with innovative designs inside which the idols are kept for the duration of the festival. While many artisans of Kumartuli have taken to creating idols and interpreting the deities’ forms in modern avatars, the women artisans of Kumartuli have kept to creating idols in the traditional style, and their customers like it that way.

Prodosh Basu, a Kolkata resident, whose family has been holding Durga Puja celebrations in their ancestral home in the city for 126 years, likes the idols in the tradition style. “I have been buying idols of the goddess from China Pal for the past 14 years. Her artistry in drawing & painting the goddess’ eyes in the traditional style of painting is what makes her work special,” says Basu. “When China’s father passed away, her brother said that he wouldn’t be able to make the idols. So my brothers and I came to China didi and we asked her to make it for us. We were one of her first clients and we’ve come to her ever since.”

Kumartuli’s first woman artisan

China Pal applies paint on an idol inside her workshop. (Photo: Neha Banka)

“This work is very difficult. There is no comparison with other businesses. In other businesses, if I can’t deliver something, I’ll do it tomorrow. But in this, the days of the festival are marked on the calendar and I have to deliver it by this date. So there is a lot of struggle and I have to fight many battles and wars to do this business. Even if I am unwell or if I have other troubles, I have to fight and go through the festive season,” says China Pal, a sentiment that has been echoed by the other women in Kumartuli.

There are no written records of the first woman in the business, but Mala Pal’s brother Gobinda, 56, believes that an artisan named Kamakhya Pal was the first woman in Kumartuli to work as an idol-maker. “A woman called Kamakhya Pal who passed away a few years ago, was the first woman who had her own workshop. Because her livelihood was based entirely upon idol-making, nobody dared say anything to her as they knew that if she didn’t make idols, she wouldn’t survive,” says Gobinda Pal, watching the shop while his sister runs out to buy some paint.

“She used to question why women weren’t allowed to work in the profession and she encouraged girls to come into her workshop to learn. It was a male dominated society,” says Gobinda, recalling Kamakhya Pal’s work. “Now, there is so much happening. Girls are playing football and cricket. But in 1985, it was unheard of that women would work in this profession. Kamakhya used to ask the girls to come to her shop”

“We asked why couldn’t women work in this profession? We asked why were they afraid to come out of their houses & why they only make idols inside the confines of their home & not in workshops,” says Gobinda Pal.

Women who’ve come a long way

China Pal has come a long way in the two decades since she started working. “When I came into this profession, nobody recognised me. So I have had to gain hard-earned recognition with each day,” she says. Her hard work has paid off. “In 2011, things I never imagined happened to me. I got an award from the Governor of Bengal and in 2018, the Government of India sent me to China as a woman artisan from Kumartuli,” says China Pal. According to Pal, her artistry and work was noticed by the Consulate-General of China in Kolkata and she made her first overseas trip to Kunming. At that time, she didn’t have a passport and she had to rush to submit her application to receive her first passport in time for her travel to China.

One of China Pal’s customers, Prodosh Basu, takes a look at the progress of his idol and mimics the pose his goddess takes. (Photo: Neha Banka)

With a small fan revolving above her, on a rainy afternoon in the city, Mala Pal sits cross-legged on the floor of her workshop and slowly applies strokes of yellow paint on an idol’s face. “Sometimes we wonder if it is worth it because it is hard work. There is a saying in Bengali that looking at the fruit one can recognise the tree. Similarly, some day the women artisans will get recognised because of their work,” she says, without looking up from her work. “We have faced many challenges, but we never left idol-making because I believed that some day we will be recognised for our work.”

“This is a very competitive business and you can’t compare it with other professions. We have to fight to survive here. It’s a hard life and I get no rest at all till the fifth day of Durga Puja,” says China Pal.

“The amount of labour that needs to be invested in this work, the high levels of stress that the artisans work under to ensure proper delivery of the idols; they are not adequately compensated in that regard,” says Prodosh Basu, one of China Pal’s customers, of the work put in by the artisans of Kumartuli.

A few weeks before the start of the festival, China was busy talking to a customer who had stopped by to check on the progress of his idol. “This is unlike any other business. Come hail or storm, I have to ensure that the idols are delivered before the start of the festival,” says China Pal.

Basu carefully squeezes himself between rows of idols in various stages of preparation and stops before his idol, identified by a small paper tag pasted on a wooden board behind the figure of the goddess, and observes it’s form. While inside the workshops, one has to be careful because idols occupy every square inch of space and bumping into one, especially with a backpack or purse, means breaking the idol in an almost irreparable way. “In other professions, if today I don’t sell something, I can always sell it tomorrow. But I can’t do that in this business,” says China Pal.

Busy making idols for the world, the artisans rarely find time to make one for themselves. On Mahalaya, one day before the start of the 10-day long festival of Durga Puja, the idols are carefully carried out of Kumartuli and for the artisans, the moment is a poignant one. They know that the customers will stop by again only next year, forgetting for now the people whose hands have shaped these idols that they will worship with such pomp and circumstance. “A priest offering prayers at the start of the festival doesn’t bring the idol to life. The idols are brought to life by our hands that create them,” says China Pal. After the conclusion of the festival, when the idols are immersed in the Ganges river, cries of ’asche bochor abar hobey’ ring out. Next year, all of this will happen again.