New reflections on an ancient art…..Priyanka P. Narain
The Internet is helping to give exposure to the craft of a small group of artisans in a Kerala village
The Internet is helping to give exposure to the craft of a small group of artisans in a Kerala village
In the shadow of the Parthasarathy temple in Kerala, the ancient art of making metallic mirrors is dying and reviving at the same time.
The Internet is taking this relatively unknown art form to new cultures within and outside the country, but the money that is so generated is being used to provide an education to children (the hereditary keepers of this knowledge) to help them escape the laborious life of a craftsman.
In the dilapidated two-storey home of A.K. Selvaraj, where stairs are cobwebbed and damp rooms are bereft of furniture, the rows of shining metal mirrors, all encased in varied gold shapesa lotus, a Ganesha head, a petalled flower, a fish, a sun, a boat, a leaf, a peacock, a trophy or a teapotlook odd.
But they are exquisite, hand-crafted productionsmetallic mirrors made from an alloy of copper and tinthat herald good luck and good omen because (according to legend) they were once used by Hindu goddess Parvati as a symbol of union with God.
Twelve people of seven familiesdescendants of the original family of the Tamil Vishwakarma caste that invented it many centuries ago (no one knows exactly when)claim to be its secret-keepers, the only living people who know the formula to make these mirrors. Seven years ago, they were given a patent of geographical indication by the government of India, which means that all mirrors made with this technique will be known as Aranmula mirrors (other examples of products named after their place of origin are Darjeeling tea and champagne). This is the secret that our forebears gave us and made us vow that it would always remain in the family, and it has sustained us for centuries, said Gopalkrishnan, who runs the business with his brother, Selvaraj.
But the business of mirror making has been done in debilitating poverty in Aranmula village, Kerala, where artisans such as Krishnan do physically exhausting work in the name of art and in pursuit of daily bread: labouring over mud and clay, stoking brick kilns, watching the metals melt in perfect proportion, then pouring them into brick, mud and wax containers, breaking them open, polishing the metal over a slab of smooth stone, until it reflects like a real mirror, and finally fitting it into its gold case.
The 24cm temple mirror set into a cast mount from a village near Chengannur (Aranmula) that is displayed in the British Museum is a reminder that for more than a millennium the artisans of Aranmula have provided mirrors to temples, kings, wealthy citizens and beautiful princesses across the country. Now, with rising income, Indians are once again flocking to purchase mirrors as good-luck charms for their families and friends.
Little data has been collected on sales and employment, but anecdotal data suggests that because of the Internet and marketing efforts of the government, the market is rapidly expanding. The Internet has put the mirror on the global map. We are getting more and more enquiries every month from all over the world, said Anil S., who has managed an online store for Selvaraj and Gopalkrishnan since late 2006.
At the Handicrafts Development Corporation of Kerala (also known as Kairali) in Kochi, where an exhibition for Aranmula mirrors is going on, store manager Annamma Varghese said: We cannot give you the figures, but sales have at least tripled in the last three years alone.
On the website, middlemen sell these mirrors to wealthy customers from India and abroad for steep prices that range from Rs.1,500 for a small one-inch hand mirror to Rs.1.6 lakh for an 18-inch standing table mirror.
Less than half finally reaches the artisans. If I sell one mirror to someone for, say, Rs.7,000, he puts it on his website or something and resells it for Rs.18,000, said Selvaraj, explaining why he has now set up his own website. Other artisans have taken similar measures, but luck plays a big role and there remains great disparity in what each one gets for their labour.
They stand divided amongst themselves. Each family has its own marketing strategy that they do not wish to share with the others, said P.N. Suresh, an executive director of Vasthuvidya Gurukulam (a government centre for the promotion and preservation of traditional architecture in Arnamula), who has spent the last six years trying to set-up a common workshop for the artisans. They do not trust each other. I have Rs.10 lakh of government funds since 2006 that I was supposed to use to build their workshop, but I cannot use it until they are willing to share a platform.
The problem is that we are riddled with complexes. We are just seven families, but our histories are so interconnected and our sense of hierarchy is so deep that we can no longer see what is good for us in the long run, said P. Gopakumar, the only one of the 12 to work outside his home village and one of two to hold a degree in economics. Everyones business has picked up in the last few years, but I have resigned myself that things will not change and middlemen will take away our profits. I tried very hard for many years to make a guild and sell our mirrors as one unit, but I have thoroughly failed in that effort
he concluded.
It was one of the most expensive purchases of my life, but after the mirror came to my home, I got a job, got married and settled down. I even bought my own boat within a year
It has brought me happiness, said T. Balakrishnan, a fisherman near Kollam, who runs a fish business and owns a small one-and-a-half-inch mirror.
This is the lure of these handcrafted mirrors: the promise of good fortune when it comes into the home. Unfortunately, there are no historical records and everything we know today about these mirrors is legend and myth.
According to the most accepted version of this tale, the king (no one knows his name) of Aranmula wanted to renovate the temple of Parthasarathy (Hindu god Vishnu as the charioteer of Arjuna in the battle of Mahabharata) sometime in the 16th century. He brought a family from the Tamil Vishwakarma caste from Sivankoil in Tamil Nadu and charged them with the task of repairing metal products of the templeincluding the crown of the deity. Legend says they were struggling to make a new crown when goddess Parvati (consort of Hindu god Shiva and the original user of this mirror) appeared in a dream to the wife of the craftsman. We believe that the composition of the mirror was revealed to her in a dream. We believe goddess Parvati, who uses such a mirror, herself told us, said T. Sundaram, an artisan whose son is studying in a polytechnic and daughter is training to become a nurse.
The temple chief was so delighted with the invention that the mirror found its way into ashtamangalyam, the eight sacred objects that families in Kerala keep in their homes to bring luck and prosperity.
For more than four centuries, the secret was faithfully passed verbally from generation to generation who lived in poverty. Ironically, now that the wealth is coming as the world renews its appreciation of the art, it is threatening to destroy the art itself
for those who were charged with its safekeeping no longer wish to burden their children with it.
This house is better than it ever was before, said S. Murugan, brother-in-law of Selvaraj, waving his arm around the room, where plaster had fallen out in great chunks and a rusty wooden shelf where spiders had woven giant webs. Selvaraj and Gopalkrishnan agreed. We may not be getting all that we are due, but we are still getting more than before, and it is helping to expand our business, said Gopalkrishnan, stoking the fire in the brick hearth. On the rooftop, where they brew the liquid alloy, two-year-old Sharad looked on while his father and uncle melted tin and copper in a cup on the fire.
They too, had spent childhood years learning the secret art from their father and grandfather. But Selvaraj is not sure if he wants the same life for his son. Explaining that making mirrors was back-breaking work, he said he wanted to use his earnings to give his child an education that would help him escape from this laborious life. Small mirrors take about 10 days to make, while larger ones can take as long as eight months. Often they break in the process of polishing, and we have to start right from scratch. The larger the mirror, the more delicate it is, said Gopakumar.
If our children are interested in this then we are happy to hand over the business to them. But we cannot force our children into this just because it is our traditional business. Its not an easy life, said Sundaram.
There lies the trouble, explained Kumar, They will not share the secret with anyone outside, because their children might need it someday. And the children are chasing social status with degrees in engineering and medicine. For Rs.2 lakh, they will become a doctor or engineer in just five years
And so, said Varghese, someday soon, people will say, Once there was a mirror