Carving Into Ancient Tradition
A master craftsman in India shares a fading art.
This article was awarded first place in Abroad View's 2009 Writing Contest for the Immersion category. It was published in Abroad View's fall 2009 magazine. Photo used courtesy of www.thelongestwayhome.com.
By Wade P. Shepard
II was picked up in the morning at the front gate of the Rajasthan Hotel by the master woodcarver, Umesh Singh, and we rode off on his motorcycle through the busy streets of Jaipur, India. As we criss-crossed lanes of exhaust-spewing traffic, dodged holy cows, honked at broken-down beggars, and plowed through ladies awash in a kaleidoscope of colorful saris, I held on tightly to the backseat of the rumbling motorbike.
Before takeoff, Singh smacked an orange plastic construction worker’s hat on my head in a halfhearted jest at “protection.” I held onto the back of his motorcycle and could only pray I would not be thrust upon the streets and turned into something resembling the chickpea masala that I had eaten for breakfast.
Singh is a traditional Indian woodcarver who makes his living carving and selling statuettes and motifs of Asian spiritual figures. I remember Singh as a stoic and proud man who carried himself with the authority of someone who knows he has perfected his craft. I had met him the day before as he sat behind his little army of sandalwood carvings at a booth in the traditional arts market of the City Palace of Jaipur. As I looked over his wares, we quickly moved into a friendly conversation, and I asked if I could write an article about him and the life of a traditional woodcarver in modern India. He quickly obliged me with a bobble of his head and invited me to be a guest in his home the following day.
I was curious to learn if the contemporary Indian craftsman continued to use the riches of ancient tradition and folk-knowledge, or if his art has been perverted by the impervious weight of modernization and tourism.
After the white-knuckled motorcycle journey across Jaipur, we arrived at Singh’s family home. He lived in a modest, rundown building that was directly connected to a plethora of other organically stuck-together households that are the hallmark of Rajasthan architecture. In fact, the entire neighborhood seemed to be pasted together in some kind of ancient urban planning scheme, and there was no telling where one family’s home ended and another began.
Singh took me into the home’s inner courtyard and directed me toward a small chair set up next to a rug and some carving tools on the floor. The walls of the house shot up from the floors at obtuse angles and had torn out pictures of Indian gods and goddesses hanging cockeyed from thumbtacks all over them. Nearly every inch of wall space was in need of another fresh coat of green pastel paint. Singh’s home was in a state of satisfied, comfortable neglect, as it had probably been for centuries.
I sat in the chair that was awkwardly placed in the room for my benefit alone. Everyone else sat on the floor. The room quickly filled with people who had come to meet the foreigner. Singh’s mother, niece, brother, father, and some unclaimed little rascal were all inspecting me from every direction and chattering amongst themselves. I was beginning to feel like an incompetent boy-king sitting on a foldout chair of a throne as I looked down upon the heads of people whom I did not know, speaking a language I could not understand, in a land that stretched beyond my imagination.
Singh soon walked over to me and sat cross-legged upon a blanket that was laid near a couple of well-worn, dirty toolboxes. He was ready to begin giving me a lesson in sandalwood carving and, after opening the toolboxes, he removed a handful of elongated metal tools. He then inspected each intensely before handing them over to me one at a time. The tools consisted of steel rods of various sizes and shapes, chisels, files, drills, and a collection of sandpaper that he used to scrape and carve the blocks of wood that he transformed into beautiful statuettes. These were the tools of the Indian sandalwood carver.
Singh then gave me a lesson on the types of wood from which he shapes his creations. He placed specimens of teak and ebony into my hands for me to feel and look over, but sandalwood was the prize material of his trade. He pulled out a half-finished sandalwood tiger figurine from a bag and instructed me to smell it. It had a sharp and musky fragrance.
“This smells like incense,” I said, as Singh smiled.
“Yes, like incense,” he repeated, excitement in his eyes.
Singh then began working as I sat in the chair and watched him scrape away at a chunk of sandalwood. He shaved pieces here and there, with control and precision. His movements were exact, done with the complete confidence of someone who has been carving since he was a child. It was clear that he knew each move he made from deep down in his being. He had probably carved the same piece hundreds of times before, its blueprints indelibly etched into his psyche.
Carving was Singh’s family trade: his father was a carver, as was his grandfather. He told me a story of how, when his father was a young man, he would walk down the street covered in sandalwood dust and everyone would be able to smell him coming from far away. Singh pushed together a little pile of sandalwood dust and put it in my hand. “Smell, smell,” he said. “Good smell.” He spoke with a smile, relishing the pure joy of his craft.
Singh had to return to the family’s booth at the market, so his father, Shyam, took his son’s place on the work blanket and promptly began carving out little animal decorations on a pre-sculpted figure. I sat silently and watched, transfixed by the movements of his hands as he cut through the wood as if it were butter. He worked with as much precision as his son, and absolute confidence was again apparent in each stroke of his blade. He seemed to be a part of the woodblock that he was carving, working with meditative concentration for more than an hour without a pause in his rhythm. The carving process was unbelievably time-consuming. Two hours of solid work went by, and the piece was scarcely any nearer to completion than when he began.
Curiosity soon struck me. I picked up a sandalwood scrap and a blade and tried to carve something into it. I was surprised by how much strength it took to even get the blade to bite into the wood, and I could not make the simplest cut with the slightest degree of precision. I laughed at myself, and Shyam also chuckled at my feeble attempts. It was clear to me then that woodcarving is an art that takes many years of constant practice and patience to learn, and a lifetime to perfect.
Umesh Singh and his father were living examples of proud craftsmen, relics of what humans were once capable of. I was in the presence of an ancient tradition as I watched them create masterpieces from chunks of sandalwood. I truly felt, in those hours of silent carving, that there was nothing in the world more honest than a craftsman’s working hands. My cynicism had completely dissipated as I learned that a large degree of the traditional artistic spirit has survived the influx of modern triviality in the art of sandalwood carving. But it will probably not endure.
“There is not enough money in wood carving,” Singh told me sadly, as he explained why his children have no interest in working sandalwood. We now live in a world where price tags determine value, and money directs the course of our attention. There is no longer room for tradition, patience, and heartfelt handiwork.
In the presence of Umesh and Shayam Singh, I was witnessing the last residual breaths of this ancient Indian tradition. Umesh Singh’s children will not carry on the family trade, and he knows the chain of folk knowledge will end with him. His family’s livelihood and tradition will not be linked into the future. The mastery of Umesh and Shayam Singh will die as victims of our monetarily driven times.
Wade P. Shepard is a recent graduate of Global College, formerly the Friends World Program, of Long Island University (www.brooklyn.liu.edu/globalcollege). He studied in Japan, China, India, and Morocco, earning a B.A. with a concentration in ethnographic journalism. His website is www.vagabondjourney.com.