Painter Soumitra Kar is sitting in the small room that is his studio at his family home in Betor, Howrah. A large painting rests on the floor. But all around him are shelves overrun by small dolls (putul), toys (khelna) and clay and wooden figures. Mostly of these are from Bengal, a few from other states and countries. Collected by Kar and his friends, they number to more than a thousand and are the result of many journeys to places quite near us, and quite unknown.
Kar, 57, has been collecting these figures from village melas (fairs), for almost four decades, from around 1985, when he enrolled as a student of fine arts and western painting at Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. His collection is breathtaking, ranging from original “Mommi dolls” (after the Egyptian mummy, they are the traditional brightly painted wooden dolls that can only lie supine, now commercially produced and quite popular in the city), to numerous idols of Ma Shashthi, the Bengali goddess of fertility who has children installed all over her body, to an army of birds and beasts, some of them deities, to a pantheon of local gods and goddesses whom the city has forgotten, but faith in whom is as alive as ever as they are believed to be protecting the villages still.
“My love for dolls began when I was a child, with a small idol of Radha and Krishna that belonged to my mother. On occasions like Raas, the winter festival that celebrates Krishna’s life, this putul would be dressed up. (In colloquial Bengali, putul can mean anything small made with clay, including idols of deities. Putul is stationary; khelna moves.)
“This area, Betor, in Santragachhi, was an old trading centre by the Hooghly. The disappeared river Saraswati flowed near it. Later Europeans, including the British, would come to Betor for business in Bengal,” says Kar. The local fairs, which Kar as a child would visit, would have a dazzling set of dolls, which, as Kar would later understand, would also have something to do with the history of the place. “The Ramrajatala fair and the Raas mela at Andul were famous,” says Kar. These fairs are still held, but their grameen (folk) character has been lost, rues Kar.
As a student of art college he began to look at folk art to understand his own history as an artist and began to travel to the interiors of Bengal. The travel became an “addiction”.
“We began to visit every fair and document the objects we collected. We would collect everything then, from pata chitra to pottery.” A book series on the fairs of Bengal by Asok Mitra, the civil servant and social scientist, was a great help.
Kar’s course at art college taught him about Western paintings and the Great Masters. He kept thinking about what made Indian art different from Western art. Two aspects of Indian stood out for him.
One, the absence of individual artists in traditional Indian art. The highest of traditional Indian art was created by artists who remain unknown. Who knows an artist who sculpted an exquisite temple figure in Khajuraho? Only the names of kings who commissioned the works remain. Two, the absence of painting. “Between the Ajanta caves and the Mughal miniatures, hardly any painting exists.” Sculpture and architecture were the more dominant art forms in Indian culture.
“Indian and western art are completely different.,” says Kar. Later when he visited the art museums in Europe he would feel the same again. “Visiting the village fairs we began to think why painting should be considered the only form of art. I felt the urge to know my country better.”
He felt that he should incorporate into his own art in a contemporary way the folk art forms he was collecting. “My travels became even more obsessive!” he laughs. The canvas on the floor has an abstract figure in the centre. “It is based on a mummy doll of the owl,” explains Kar.
His travels took him to the heart of faith.
On one shelf in Kar’s studio stands a row of gods. They are powerful deities worshipped in the villages. This set of the small, finely detailed and beautiful clay idols is made in Joynagar in South 24-Parganas.
Among the deities here is Bonbibi, a very popular goddess in South 24-Parganas, worshipped by those who go to the forest to collect wood or honey and seek her protection, but also by others. She is worshipped by both Hindus and Muslims. When worshipped by Muslims, Kar says, Bonbibi may wear a cap with plant motifs, a garland of wild flowers, ghagra, shoes, socks, a thin odni and her hair may be braided. She may ride a hen or a tiger and on her lap is often sighted a little boy, said to be a woodcutter’s son. For Hindus, her idol may come with a yellow complexion, wear a mukut (crown), a garland of wild flowers, and the same boy may be seen on her lap.
Part of Bonbibi’s story are the other redoubtable Sunderbans’ deity Dakshin Rai, who rides a tiger and is worshipped beyond the Sunderbans, and Narayani, not the classical goddess but a female warrior. Their idols stand on the shelf, too. Bonbibi and the Dakshin Rai’s alliance was a symbolic burial of religious differences to fight for survival in the harshest of environments. A whole nation lies out there, where faith is not defined by politics, or even religion.
Ateshwar is another arresting deity — or perhaps a spirit — worshipped in South 24-Parganas, the Sunderbans in particular, and Medinipur. He is a heroic god, with a light blue or green complexion, holding a club. He is said to be a protector of fishermen. Pir Gorachand is a handsome warrior worshipped by Hindus and Muslims in south Bengal. He wears a choga chapkan and is considered a protector of the people.
Kar and his friends could spend Rs 1,000 to travel to a fair, around a temple, or a gajan, for something that cost only Rs 50. He speaks about the huge pressing crowds he saw on such occasions, crowds that had gathered to see exceptional sights, even miracles.
“Factual truth is one thing. The power of faith another,” says Kar.
“Jogodya Devi’s idol remains under water at her temple in Khirgran, Burdwan. She is considered so powerful that she needs to remain submerged. The stone idol is pulled up only once a year. At Joynagar, two kadam flowers have to bloom for the Raas mela to start, though winter is not the season for them to bloom. At a fair in Khanakul, Hooghly, on the occasion of a gajan for Shiv, a beautiful kite will come, it is said. At the Bishalakshi temple in Shyampur, near Howrah’s Gorchumuk, fireworks would be pledged to the goddess as manat instead of animals or vegetables.”
“You will often see clay horses or elephants at the roots of trees. They are called ‘chhalaner ghora’ or ‘haati’. They are meant to protect the villagers, Hindus and Muslims.” These horses are as elegant as the iconic Bengali terracotta horse from Panchmura, Bankura.
“But my interest was in the form of folk art,” says Kar, who received a fellowship from the ministry of culture on how to present folk art in contemporary form. His paintings remain an attempt in that direction.
Many of the figures, mostly the dolls, in his collection have otherwise disappeared. “Now Chinese plastic dolls and toys are replacing everything. And only a few Bengal craft items are being mass produced for the city, which takes away from their original features,” he says.
So it is such a pity that the Joynagar terracotta dolls depicting a strapping wife dragging her drunken husband home, or the barely-clad babu and bibi dolls smelling of sin, strongly reminiscent of Kalighata Pata paintings, may be the last of their species.
Same for the Rani putul. Once a household doll, but easily mistaken for an Indian female form, it is actually inspired by Queen (Rani) Victoria. What the doll is wearing is not a ghagra but a pleated skirt.
“But the deities that are disappearing most are the ones who are not worshipped anymore,” says Kar.
