Bored With Your Current Job?

Thinking about a career change? Here is the Kim and Boaz list of alternative, yet amazing professions you can pursue. We have been collecting these for a while, and it is time we shared them with you. India is brimming over with an array of occupations that you don't see so often in the west anymore - like the sign painters, tanners, basket makers, weavers and many more. India also has some unique professions, that never existed in the west, like paan wallahs, jasmine flower garland makers and coconut tree climbers - the terrestrial version of pearl divers: apparently a very dangerous job reserved for a "special" (i.e. low) caste.

We have decided to dedicate one post to some of the more amazing craftsmen we have seen on our trip. Whenever we meet anyone making something on the street we are riveted to the spot, asking questions, taking pictures and buying unnecessary, yet fun, souvenirs from them (which might turn up as prizes for bright blog readers later).


The first one we saw on our trip was the woodblock carver. This young guy was sitting outside his shop near Crawford market in Mumbai, carving the most intricate patterns on wood blocks that would later be used for both block printing fabric (mostly cotton) and for applying henna to ladies' hands. The henna application is for lazy or un-coordinated ladies only- or more often a guy on the street who does henna for a few rupees in under a minute (it takes quite a while if you do it "by hand" and is priced accordingly). He started by taking an off cut of plywood...we can write a whole other post about the people who make a living selling leftover bits and pieces of stuff... Then he drew the pattern to be carved, often according to a template that was prepared by another person in the workshop. Then he proceeded to chisel little bits of wood at a time, according to the lines previously drawn, leaving the pattern in relief. His chisels that looked very very sharp, but also were obviously made from scraps of steel: old needle files and broken drill bits, and his "hammer" looked like an old chair. Indians are so good about recycling!

Much as we would have liked to purchase something from the Ganesha maker, we restrained ourselves, knowing that a terracotta statue would simply not travel well. We encountered the Ganesha maker in Badami, he was part of the family (to whom you were introduced in the sari post) whose womenfolk gave Kim the beautiful green bangles. It was only after hanging out on their doorstep for almost 15 minutes that our glances fell upon a small clay leg lying there... there was such a big crowd of people that it was difficult to see what this may be attached to, but then we noticed that there was a statue of Ganesh sitting there, minus a leg. The man would take a piece of clay and, with the help of a small sculpting knife, would fashion individual body parts to put on the statue. The detail was amazing. We were impressed by his sculptures - they were all about 40 cm in height, and he had made several that morning, all of them lined up on a side shelf to dry. Unfortunately, these lovely pieces were later covered by painting them really bright, kitchy colours...


One of our favourite jobs was seen in Chettinad while we were pretending to be rich, and that was the Sari weaver. We met a couple who had a small "factory" composed of 70 looms in total, spread over different houses in town. In house we visited, there were three weavers and one woman winding bobbins on a bicycle wheel. The looms were amazing, very simply made of bamboo poles. The women sat in chairs set into the floor, probably because it is easier to make a hole in the floor than to build a table for the entire loom, the looms were easily 6 meters long- about the length of a sari, come to think of it. One woman is able to weave a sari in 2 days, 4 if it is complicated with checks or patterns. An additional morning or so is also needed to set up the loom with all of the threads. Because the visit was organized through our expensive hotel the saris were unfortunately priced accordingly, and we did not end up getting any, but don't worry, we did end up getting some table cloths - the stuff was simply irresistible.

Boaz fell in love with the bead turner. If you described what this man was doing and we hadn't seen it for ourselves we would have told you that this is impossible. This man, who we saw in Panderpur during the mela, was making beads for rosary-type prayer necklaces. He used really soft wood, apparently with a hollow center. He drilled a hole through a little piece of this wood with a long needle, and then set it between the centers of a very simple little "lathe", basically a small metal frame. With his right hand he used a bow which was wound around the piece of wood, and while it was turning, he was using a chisel with his left to round and shape 5-6 beads at a time. Then he took them off, cut them into individual pieces and strung them. The beads he made were tiny - about 5 mm in diameter, and you needed at least a hundred of them for one of these necklaces.

BARFI: Although there were some pretty good attempts, no one answered last post's quetion correctly. The strange plant in question, of which we have only shown you the flower, has an edible root. It is GINGER... we would have never guessed either if our guide hadn't told us.