Salim’s Ravan

Sixteen years ago,Salim had accompanied his “ustaad” to Punjab during the Dussehra season. “Here,I took easily to making effigies. I have been coming here every year since then. Five years ago,I too became an ustaad and now I have people from my town and some from my family who work with me,” he says.

Effigy-making may lack the finesse of wood carving,but Salim says it comes with its own challenges. “Each of the three effigies—that of Ravan,Meghnath and Kumbhkaran—has to look different. So we make Ravan taller,his face bigger and his moustache longer and rounder. His crown is bigger too than that of his brother and son,” says Salim.

For Salim,it is a lot of hard work amid difficult living conditions. His family and that of the workers share a shed that they have put up close to the work site. Salim’s wife does the cooking and his seven-year-old daughter Sazia is ready to be taken around the city after the day’s work.

“We start at 8 a.m. and work till it is dark without a break on weekends. It takes 10 to 12 days to complete the three effigies—the most tedious task is that of slicing the bamboo sticks—and then we move to where our work takes us next. This year,I have secured two contracts and we will be here for a month,” he says.

The two contracts will fetch him Rs 84,000 that he has to divide among his three workers. Two of them,Mohammad Afzal and Mohammad Zamir,are novices in the art,while his brother-in-law Mohammad Nazib is now a trusted hand,says Salim.

Four years ago,Salim won a cash award of Rs 10,000 for making the tallest effigy of Ravan in Patiala that year. This Dussehra,Salim says he has repeated his feat. “I have again made a 50-foot-tall effigy of Ravan. I bet no one else in the city can beat that,” he says. (But the Shri Ram Lila Committee in Chandigarh said its effigies at the Sector 17 Parade Ground would be 65 feet tall.)

Not every Dussehra brings work. Last year,Salim had to return home without putting up a single effigy. “The contract price was not enough to cover our costs. But good work does not go unnoticed. Someone else made the effigies last year but the Ramlila organisers weren’t happy with their work so they offered us a better deal this time round,” he says.

Salim has to ensure he networks right so that he gets work. “We give our cellphone numbers to Ramlila organisers. They contact us and quote a price. If we can make a decent margin,we agree.”

By Tuesday,Salim’s work at Sector 7 in Chandigarh was done—Ravan,Meghnath and Kumbhkaran stood tall and proud,another vain attempt at glory before they would come crashing down like they had every year. Salim and his workers will now move to Manimajra,another part of the city.

But Salim says his work isn’t complete till the day the effigies go up in flames. “We have to give the final touches—draping the effigies with cloth and filling them with crackers. It is only after they burst on the day of Dussehra that we get the second part of our fee,” he says.

Once that comes in,Salim will take his little daughter out to see the city. “We plan to stay for two more days after Dussehra and go to see the lake,gardens and shops. Sazia has been waiting for it all these days,” he says.