While effigies floated in water and lay broken on the street, artisans at Titarpur tried their level best to repair them. Iknoor Kaur took a walk with the Ravana walas
The feeling of festive cheer and hope was missing at the grounds of Titarpur in Tagore Garden. Standing a step away from the metro station, one could sense the despair, heartbreak and emotional agony.
The tattered pinks, blues and greens of the angry-faced men shone in the sunlight that had just graced the locality. Bamboo sticks popped out of the neatly decorated effigies that lay immersed in water. The rain gods wept their hearts out only to leave the local artisans of Delhi disgruntled. The age-old Ravana makers of Titarpur, known for their 40 to 50 feet tall Ravana effigies all over the country, sat at their usual spots waiting for a miracle to happen. For the second time in a row, they lost their three months of hard work to water, not fire.
As I walked up to Dase Ravana Wala situated a few yards away from the Tagore Garden metro station, the soft sobs of a man caught my attention. “We have lost everything. We stayed up all night to finish the consignment because it had to be shipped to various places in the country and now we have nothing. We don’t know what to tell the customer. All our money has literally gone down the drain,” howled a young fellow at the make-shift shop. Dase and his army of men had been working on the effigies since the past two months and spent over Rs2 lakh on the raw material. “We brought most material from Haryana. last night we gave the finishing touches. We slept around 4 am and we woke up to face the misery,” he shared.
A few steps ahead, another Ravana maker named Karan was trying to arrange the dilapidated dummies lying by the roadside. He said that the previous year too he had ended up selling none of his effigies and this year again he was stuck in the same trap. “Entire year we wait for Dusseha so that we can earn some money. But every time we are at loss,” he added.
In spite of the loss these artisans faced in 2012, they were not allowed to put up sheds or given and space to keep their effigies.
Rahul Rai who has been in this business for eight years said, “Nobody is ready to help us. The entire Delhi celebrates with our Ravanas and still we have no value. If we had been given permission to even put up tents, so much damage could have been avoided.”
The oldest in the business is Subhash and Mahinder Ravan Wala, that ran into its 25th year now. Subhash said that now they are only relying on the sun. “If the sum is up we will repair our effigies and then sell them. However, the cost of the effigies will be affected. We were selling 40 feet Ravanas for Rs12,000 earlier but now nobody will buy them for more than Rs7,000. Since it had rained last year and we lost a lot of money, this year all of us made very limited number of effigies. But again the same thing has happened. I think next year we will not make unless we are sure they will not get damaged,” he said.
The only cheerful face in the area was of Tulsi. The man runs his Ravana-making shop under the metro station. Hence, he lost only one-fifth of his consignment. “I made around 50 effigies of which only 10 got wet. I will repair and sell them at a lower cost,” he said.
In spite of broken hearts and shattered enthusiasm, all the roadside artisans have not lost all hope. They all affirmed that if the effigies didn’t dry they would repair them and sell them the way they are. “Something is better than nothing,” signed off Dase, who had wiped his tears off by the time I waved him goodbye.