Hey friends, Myself Harish, being a writer I always wanted to reveal the stories of unknown places and forts but this time i am writing about stories of some unappreciated workers and artists of Jaipur, yes friends in this article you will read about the problems and efforts of these workers.
Ravan mandi, Jaipur is famous market of colorful ravan puppets, the main market is situated at mansarovar. I always wanted to have a chat with them regarding their problems, so i personally visited them and took an interview of a person named Suresh (representative from basti). All these workers lives in a basti in mansarovar.
Q1. What are the major problems you face ?
Suresh – The major problem is
1. If the rain persists, it ruins all the puppets and our business stops as rain starts.
2. We have to take permissions from the municipality for covering the half way of the roads as puppets increase day by day.
Q2. How do you make such beautiful puppets in such short period of time?
Suresh – This is our art that is given by our four-fathers as blessing to us because we have to make earning of full year in just navratri days, so we are thankful to them.
Q3. Usually what are the rates of ravan puppets?
Suresh – If Customer wants a structure of puppet then the rates are cheap and economic. But when we talk about complete puppets it starts with 7k – 20k or more.
Q4. What you do if rain persists?
Suresh – When rain persist, our full basti starts to hide the puppets under the metro bridge but its impossible to hide all the puppets, it ruins our business.
Q5. What do you do when its off season for you “unlike navaratri”?
Suresh – We make chairs, tables and baskets of some material and sell them but the core business runs in navratri as Vijaya dashmi arrives.
Picture Credits : Shobhit Tiwari
