I was picked up in the morning by the master wood carver, Umesh Singh, and we rode off on his motorcycle through the busy Jaipur streets to his home in a little neighborhood near the public commodities market. Umesh is a traditional Indian wood carver and makes his living from carving and selling little statuettes and motifs of idealized Asian spiritual figures as well as the animals that once roamed the region freely. He is a very stoic, proud man and he carries himself with that particular authority of a man who has perfected his craft. I had met him the day before at his little stand of sandalwood carvings in the art district of the city palace and he invited me to come to his home so that I could watch him as he went about his work. I was very curious to learn if the contemporary Indian craftsman continues to utilize the riches of ancient tradition and folk-knowledge or if his art has also been gentrified by the impervious weight of "modernization." I hoped that this meeting with Umesh would resolve some of my questions.
We arrived at his home after about fifteen minutes of holding on tight to the back of his motorcycle. Umesh lived in a rather modest, sort of run down building that was directly connected to a plethora of other organically stuck together households. The neighborhood was traditionally Indian and seemed to be as old as time itself. Upon entering his home, he sat me in a little reception room in the front of the house and served me a little cup of chai tea. I sipped it gratefully, as it provided me with an object to which I could direct my wavering attention, and just looked around at the carvings that lined the walls. I was soon introduced to his brother, who was a carver that gave up the family trade to become a computer consultant, and we had the initial small talk that comes with entering someone's home for the first time. I found out who is married to whom, who lives in the house, and a little about their family's carving history.
I was then taken into the house proper and walked into a small courtyard that opened up to the sky. The walls would have been real grateful to take on a fresh coat of paint and the entire place was in a state of satisfied, comfortable neglect. I sat in a chair that was placed in a kind of hallway area that adjoined the courtyard. On the floor next to me were a few toolboxes, an unidentifiable home-rigged machine, and a square blanket that distinguished the workspace from the rest of the courtyard.
Umesh soon entered the hallway area that I was in and sat cross-legged upon the blanket. He was ready to begin the lesson and opened the tool boxes, removed a handful of elongated metal tools, and inspected each of them intensely. He handed the tools to me; which consisted of steel rods with sharpened blades shaped out of each opposing end. He also showed me chisels of various sizes, files, drills, and the collection of sandpaper that he uses to scrape and carve the negative spaces away from the blocks of wood that he transforms into beautiful statuettes.
He then gave me a lesson on the types of woods that the carver shapes his wares from. Umesh placed specimens of teak and ebony into my hand, but it was sandalwood that was the prize material of his trade. He pulled out a half finished tiger figure from a bag and instructed me to smell it. I did; it smelled like fresh sandalwood. I stroked and rubbed its smooth, woody sides and I could feel the superiority of the sandalwood as compared with that of teak. Umesh was very fond of sandalwood and it was obvious that this type of wood served to define his role in the world.
Umesh then began working and I sat and just watched him scrap away at a chunk of sandalwood. He shaved off pieces here, pieces there, with controlled and precise strokes of a file. His movements were exact and done with complete confidence. He had been carving since he was a small child and it was beyond evident that he knew each move that he made from deep down in his being. He had probably carved the same piece that he was making hundreds of times before and its blueprints seemed to be indelibly etched into his psyche.
Carving was Umesh's family trade and his father was a carver as was his father before him. He told me a story of how, when his father was a young carving man, he would walk down the street covered in sandalwood dust and everyone would be able to smell him coming from far away. Umesh then pushed together a little pile of sandalwood dust and put it in my hand. "Smell, smell," he said. I did so. "Good smell," he spoke with a smile. "It smells like incense," I commented. "Yes, like incense," he said, relishing in his story and the pure joy of his craft. Umesh was certainly a proud craftsman from time's past, a relic of what humans were once capable of.
We made small talk during this time and he would occasionally look up from his work with the curious smile of a child and ask me a question. "Are you married?" he asked. "No, I'm not." "You should be married," he stated. "Do you have a girlfriend?" he continued.
"Yes, I do," I told him, and then went on to describe her a little. "Will you marry her?" he questioned. "I don't know," I said, a little taken aback. "I think that you should marry her," Umesh said with a slightly sly, mischievous grin.
Umesh continued working on the figure that he was shaping into a tiger until his father walked into the house. I was promptly introduced to him and we shook hands. Umesh then had to go to the palace to attend to the family carving stand and I was left in the charge of his father, who was the master carver of the family. His name was Shyam Singh and, like his son, he was also taught the carving trade from his father and had been making sandalwood handicrafts since he was a small child.
Shyam then took his son's place on the work blanket and promptly began carving out little animal decorations on a pre-sculpted figure. I, again, just sat silently and watched. I was transfixed by the ancient movements of his hands as he scraped and cut the wood with the steel blade. He worked with as much precision as his son but he also held an incredibly high degree of absolute sureness about him that was obvious in each of his blade strokes. He seemed to be a part of the woodblock that he was carving and he worked with meditative concentration for a couple of hours. He would occasionally show me his progress and I would touch the figure and wipe the fresh dust from it, nod, smile, and then hand it back to him to carve a little more. The carving process was almost unbelievably time-consuming and two hours of solid work left one with a piece that was scarcely any nearer to completion as when one began.
Curiosity soon struck me and I picked up a piece of sandalwood scrap and a blade and tried to carve something into it. It took a good degree of strength to even get the blade to bite into the wood and I could not make any cuts with the slightest degree of precision. I laughed at myself and Shyam also giggled at my feeble attempt. I knew then that this art takes years upon years of constant practice to get a handle on, and a lifetime to perfect.
I knew that I was in the presence of ancient tradition while I was with these master craftsmen. I truly felt in those hours of silent carving that there was nothing in the world more honest than a craftsman's working hands. I now know that some degree of traditional artistic spirit has so far survived the influx of modern brevity and triviality. But it will probably not endure. In the presence of Umesh and Shayam Singh I sadly know that I felt the last residual breaths of the ancient Indian artistic tradition. Umesh's children will not carry on the family trade and he knows that the generational chain of folk knowledge will end with him. "There is not enough money in wood carving," he told me sadly. This is the story of our monetarily driven times; there is no longer any room for tradition, patience, and heartfelt handiwork. We now live in a world where price-tags determine value and money directs the course of our attention. No longer will we know the mastery of Umesh and Shayam Singh; goodbye ancient craftsmen, goodbye.
*Written in the Autumn of 2006 in Southern India
