Do any of you have childhood memories of the weekly dhobi who’d land up at your doorstep without fail on a particular day every week, collect the family laundry and take it away? He’d deliver it the next week washed, starched and ironed with a tiny mark in black, indelible ink inside the collar of every shirt or on the edge of a bedsheet—a mark that was his code to your address—his own reference so that he did not mix up the clothes and linen of one household with another. This dhobi mark could never be removed. My school uniform bore the code marks of many of their ilk, like battle scars on a veteran soldier, as we shifted neighbourhoods and residences, and dealt with different dhobis on the journey of life. As a kid, I had no idea where our laundry would go; my mother, on being asked, would vaguely murmur ‘dhobi ghat’—a place distant and unknown, like some mythical village at the edge of the world.
Where are these dhobis now, I wonder? The washermen are long gone. Nobody—literally nobody—I know avails of their services. Their descendants, at least those who decided to continue the family trade, are probably the presswalas in your neighbourhood, ironing the clothes that you washed in your fully automatic laundry machine.
There are so many trades that are vanishing in India. How many recall the monotonous twang of the pinjar, that odd wooden gadget with a taut long wire, that the gaddawala or mattress-fluffer (I don’t know what else to call them) would play when he would pass by your house, to call you out to restuff your flattened cotton mattresses? Well, I guess your orthopaedic-memory-foam-mattress or your latex one, engineered to meet your requirements, does not need him now, does it?
What about that guy who roamed around on a bicycle calling out to all and sundry to come out and get all your knives and scissors lying at home sharpened? The knife sharpener would have a grinding wheel specially attached to his bicycle which he’d rotate as slowly or as quickly as he liked by operating the pedals, and the sparks would fly, (literally!), as he’d put the edge of the knife blade to the revolving grindstone. Chakku chhuriyaan, tez kara lo, as the song in Zanjeer went.
Kolkata had so many bespoke shoemakers of Chinese origin in the Bentinck Street area once, their art handed down from generation to generation of Chinese families living in India, for making high-end custom-made footwear and leather goods, with a Who’s Who clientele. In my own Delhi, Khan Market boasted of a K.K.Lee among others. There were Chinese shoemakers of repute in Kasauli, Dehradun and Mussoorie too. Alas, no more. The rise of online shopping and competition from foreign brands have put paid to their once thriving businesses. Most of these families have emigrated to the greener pastures of USA, Canada and Australia.
Book binding—an ancient technology in a modern world—is another dying trade. I don’t see book binding shops anymore, though they must be still around in the by lanes of our cities and towns. But you’ll not find these little shops on prime property or in glittering malls. Victims of soaring rents, this business has shrunk due to falling demand, computerization and the proliferation of online publications. Binders are hanging on by a thread.
Potters in the villages are living a hand to mouth existence today. The ancient art of pottery is now presumed to be just a quaint antiquity for tourists from the First World or just a subject in the studies of anthropology and archaeology. With technological advancements and higher labour costs, it is rather sad to see this manual authentic art being taken over by machinery and new industrial innovations.
Do you remember Bollywood heroes glaring down at you from the huge painted hoardings of their hit movies, or the heroines beside them imploring you beseechingly? Have you realized that you don’t see such hand-painted cinema hoardings anymore? Thanks to technology, these have been replaced by vinyl and flex prints. Talented painters who delighted cinema buffs for decades with their gigantic, masterful creations, drawn perfectly to scale, are now languishing in obscurity and penury.
Handloom weaving is a labour-intensive and time-consuming process. A jamdani sari (or a pashmina shawl) takes months to prepare. Hand-woven silk saris are expensive because of the artistry, intricacy, and effort involved. But in this age of fast fashion, traditional handloom weavers are losing out to modern power looms that can produce finely crafted silk saris cheaper and faster. The weaving communities are going extinct; their handlooms are gathering dust.
Have you ever had a bun maska and a paani kam chai at an Irani café in Mumbai? Well, you may never get this opportunity in the years to come. Having withstood a century of change, the Irani cafes are feeling the heat in Mumbai's fiercely competitive food market. Many of these are getting a complete makeover and becoming pubs or restaurants. Others are simply shutting up shop. All that may be left of this iconic symbol of Mumbai will be the restaurant chain SodaBottleOpenerWala which, of course, does a superb job of recreating that ambiance and menu, but at much higher prices.
There are many other vanishing trades. The snake charmer. The candlestick maker. The broom maker. I could go on….
It is not difficult to see why these trades have not survived. They have not adapted to change, the only constant in our lives.
The world is constantly evolving; tastes are changing and the competition getting stiffer. Technology is helping to mass-produce things faster, more efficiently, and, in many cases, of better quality. The traders and artisans did not foresee these factors. The strong demarcations of caste-based professions are now hazy. The next generation is reluctant to carry on the family trade and follow tradition; it is pursuing more lucrative options.
For lakhs of handloom weavers, goldsmiths, potters, masters of miniature art and painters of hoardings, their craft and skills will end with them. Tragic, but inevitable.
Beetashok Chatterjee is the author of ‘Driftwood’, a collection of stories about Life at Sea. A ship’s captain by profession, he joined the Merchant Navy at a young age and now misses it, having just retired after completing more than forty years at sea.
His book is available on Amazon. Click here.
Image Source: https://www.oneindia.com/img/2016/11/dhobi-ghat-in-mumbai-25-1480089386.jpg
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