One of Enid Blyton's immortal creations is Amelia Jane, the doll with long legs and no manners. Jane, full of life and mischief, took great pleasure in playing pranks on her fellow dolls. Unlike Jane, the dolls tucked in a dark corner of the workshop of Arati Pal and Manoranjan Rudra Pal are a dispirited lot. For, these creatures - fleshed out of clay, bits of bamboo sticks and colourful dye - are the sentinels of another time.
Arati and Manoranjan are some of the few remaining artists who make dolls on the occasion of jhulan, a festive occasion that seems to have lost its popular appeal. The skies had opened the day I visited the Pals' workshop in Nimta-Kumartuli on the road to Birati. Manoranjan and Arati - the husband and wife team also makes small idols as jhulan dolls no longer sell that much - narrated a gloomy tale of the waning of not only an art form but also a way of life. The dolls - among them were an ice-cream seller, a balloon wala, a curd seller, a phuchkawala and even a few deities - appeared to listen attentively to their own story with solemn expressions.
Changing tastes of children - they now prefer digital toys to the ones made by doll-makers - has inconvenienced the Pal family. Local melas, including the one that takes place at Belgharia Rathtala, the Pals insist, have become commercialised, preferring to sell food and consumer appliances. As a result, the dolls made by Pal often stay where I saw them: inside a jhuri (basket) in the dingy workshop. Significantly, artists like Pal have responded to the crisis in their livelihood by churning out figurines that symbolise the passing of a particular cultural ethos. Some of the toys made by the Pals - the doiwala, for example - resemble characters that are no longer common in the urban, or even in the mofussil, ecosystem.
The skies cleared a bit in the course of our conversation. Fittingly, the Pals started talking of a ray of hope on the horizon. Mamata Banerjee's government appears keen on preserving Bengal's rich legacy of doll-making that is integral to the state's folk culture and its myriad practices. There is no denying the richness of this artistic tradition. Bengal's imaginative putul-makers use such diverse ingredients as dokra, shells, bamboo, clay, cloth and jute, among other materials, to make dolls. The Pals were quick to rattle off the various kinds of assistance that they have received from the powers that be. They include stipends, organised visits to government stores, such as the Biswa Bangla kiosks, and, most important, access to new, emerging markets. Nisharani Roy, the maker of cloth dolls, supposedly quite a rage in Cooch Behar - she had given a telephonic interview a day after I visited Nimta-Kumartuli - agreed with the Pals on this point. As did Soma Mukhopadhyay, a researcher on dolls.
What is interesting though is the way the government intervention has shaped the consciousness of the artists. Roy's imagination seems to be acutely aware of the need to disseminate information about the signature welfare schemes started by the Trinamul Congress. Her "Kanyashree dolls", she said, are quite popular among officials and ordinary buyers. The Pals are grateful for State patronage. Yet, Manoranjan resists the idea of patronage undermining his autonomy as an artist. He relishes his freedom to create dolls according to his taste.
It is difficult to imagine Manoranjan making Kanyashree dolls.
But even a helpful government is not enough to insure the future of the dolls, and that of Roy and the Pals. I had asked Manoranjan whether a subsidy on raw mate-rial as well as a minimum support price for these wondrous creatures were the need of the hour. Before the veteran artist could reply, one of the dolls - an old man with a bobbing head - sprang to life, nodding its ancient head, startling both his creator and me.
At last, the dolls seemed to have spoken.
