Dussehra effigy makers are back in Delhi ahead of the festive season

New Delhi: Rajinder Raavanwala is a famous manufacturer of hand-made effigies of Raavana, Kumbh Karn, and Meghnaad. 58-years old Rajinder is both happy and sad. He was sitting cross-legged on a charpoy (bed) at a busy roadside of Najafgarh Road, near Subhash Nagar, supervising a team of some 20 craftsmen giving final shape to the 50 feet effigies of Raavana and others.

If one travels from Raja Garden to Uttam Nagar in West Delhi, one will find vast structures of bamboo and willow being manufactured and kept on footpaths on both sides. In the next ten days, they will need finishing, and the artists are praying that one week ahead of the Dussehra festival that falls on October 5, there should be no rain, as most of their structures are on the roadside, and showers can spoil all their hard work of months together.

Each model is weaved with thin bamboo sticks and knotted with tin wire and ropes. Then Skelton's structure is covered with old cotton clothes (mostly old saris), and then the brown paper is pasted with glue on the cloth. Final touches are brushed like papier-mâché work with bright paint and sparkling colourful paper sheets. The accessories are added towards the end.

Once ready, they are transported to different destinations in dismembered forms, like separate heads, torsos, limbs, faces, etc. The final stitch and standing of the effigies are done by experts a day earlier than their burning on Dussehra day. It is a feat to watch victory over evil Children love it and spend a good time watching these effigies and listening from elders to the stories behind the burning of these effigies. 

Hundreds of effigies of Raavan, Kumbh Karan and Meghanaad are in different stages of completion, scattered on the roadsides, footpaths, and municipal parks, under metro stations, being completed with a battery of workers. After two years, one can see activities on the roadside, too much charm to onlookers and travellers.

These roadside workshops have been their temporary homes for artisans for the last month, and they plan to stay in the same places for the next two weeks. These quick roadside workshops are a treat to watch. These craftsmen, unmindful of heavy traffic and pedestrian rush on both sides of Najafgarh, keep working day and night to complete these images.

The tallest model is sometimes 60 to 70 feet tall, and primarily all States, corporates and industrialists, including some resident Welfare Associations, order from them directly.

Rajinder says a set of three disjointed effigies are usually sent to different locations on trucks along with some accessories and one or two artists, who erect and fix these effigies on other grounds across India.   

Preparation is afoot to send three sets of effigies next week to South India. Equally, Rajinder worries that all the images made should sell off quickly as one never knows when the next cycle of covid19 will pull them out of work or heavy hailstorms or rains further hinder their work. 

Already the production of these effigies has reduced to more than half. Pre-Covid19 days, they would transport around 700 Raavana images, but this year around 250 Raavan are being worked out across Delhi.  

Rajinder and his associates say that this year, a smaller number of artists have come to Delhi, which is a challenge as they have to hire unskilled labourers to support the skilled artists in speeding up the manufacturing. 

Epidemic Covid19 and restrictions on celebrating Dussehra have put thousands of workers out of work. Several of them left Delhi for their native villages. All craftsmen are today under stress as they have lost two years of their seasonal earnings and are hoping to earn a good amount of money this season. 

Rajinder is equally sad that in the last two difficult years, no one came forward to help the artisans, and many of them remained out of work except they would do some scattered daily wage work. Rajinder himself is in debt of Rs 100,000. He lost a good amount of his earnings, which was never the case in his life.

Rajinder having an experience of 40 years of craftmanship in designing effigies, is also weaving tiny dolls of Raavanas for children to carry home. Earlier, their dummies travelled as far away as Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia. 

Every year these craftsmen, who temporarily take this work for two months ahead of the Dussehra, earn a handsome amount of extra money. Several labourers and support staff come from nearby Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and Utter Pradesh. But most of the leading artists have been living in Delhi for decades. He prays that most artisans get a good share of earnings this year as sales of Raavan are yet to pick up.

Dussehra festival Symbolises the victory of good over evil. Dussehra is celebrated on the 10th day of the seventh month of the Hindu calendar, called Ashvina (October 5 this year). Nearly every locality in India erects these symbolic dummies of Raavan and others. It destroys evil by burning these effigies with religious fervour and celebrations, marking the beginning of the festive season in India.