Kuber Sircar works on a wooden tie at home, surrounded by his creations and his musical instruments. Picture by Saradindu Chaudhury

He plays multiple instruments well enough to have recorded with illustrious singers. He has such a skilled way with wood that the Government of India has awarded him certificates of merit in consecutive years. Yet neither earned him his bread in his 38 years of service in the sales department of the Uttar Pradesh government’s handicraft section.

Meet Kuber Kumar Sircar, the superlatively creative resident of AE Block. His “meditation room” is full of tools many of which he shaped with his own hands from throwaways like the iron handle of a discarded plastic bucket. With these he creates one little marvel after another — wooden ties, walking sticks, photo frames, flower baskets, chokers with Krishnachura seeds.... “I started off after retirement in 1994. This is my pastime,” he smiles. And when he wants to take a break, he picks up any of the instruments lying around — mandolin, electric guitar, keyboard, mouth organ....

Some of Sircar’s creations. (Saradindu Chaudhury)

Sircar attributes his musicality to his genes. “My father had been a student of beenkar Bishnucharan Dey in Allahabad. We had esraj and sitar at home, which my brothers could play. I started playing the tabla from the age of 8.”

If the family settled in Lahore, it was because of harassment by the British police in Chittagong where Sircar was born. “Two of my brothers got implicated in the armoury raid of 1930 and were sent to Lahore. But the cops kept ransacking our house under the pretext of a search, tearing apart pillows and breaking our clay oven. Finally my family decided to shift to Lahore as well.”

But their years in Lahore were numbered. “My father got wind of the upcoming Partition and took us to Lucknow.” This is where he became a sagird of Ustad Munne Khan. “But I had to give up the tabla as I broke the main playing finger in a squabble. I tried out the esraj and the sitar but settled for the mouth organ.” He was 13 then.

In a couple of years, the boy, still in half pants, had mastered the instrument and got invited to a concert to play after Pandit V.G. Jog, who then taught violin at Marris College of Music (now Bhatkhande Music Institute) and was a producer at All India Radio, Lucknow. “Possibly because less people understand classical music, I drew a lot more applause.” The ace violonist saw the audience reaction and called him home afterwards — not with a bruised ego but with words of encouragement.

Soon the teenager had his own students. “But I could ask none for tuition fees. One used to treat me to ice cream, another took me to watch Western films. Finally, the local police chief’s son, one of my students, got a medal somewhere and the father asked me to name a gurudakshina. I had an eye on a Czech mandolin in a shop window and named it.” Thus he got an instrument but in the absence of a teacher asked a violin student how to tune it. He gave him the same notes as in a violin: Sa Pa Sa Pa.

It was years later, when he was accompanying Sandhya Mukherjee in a playback recording that the mistake was accidentally discovered. “A mandolin’s chords should be tuned as Ma Sa Pa Re. But I was managing perfectly well.”

In the early 1950s, Sircar had started freelancing at AIR Lucknow, when Shyamal Mitra came over for a recording. “He loved my accompaniment and advised me to shift to Calcutta.” Thus in 1956, he took up a job with UP Handicrafts with a Calcutta posting.

In his service life, Sircar’s creativity found occasional flourishes. “On the way to office from my Chetla home, schoolchildren kept seats for me in the bus so I would do a portrait of them by embossing the outlines on paper using my nails. Once on a flight, I created the face of an air hostess, which a co-passenger showed her. It created such a sensation among the crew that I had to make portraits for each of them and got pampered all through the journey.”

In Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary year, he distributed over 3,000 Tagores created in nail art among children who could answer his questions on the Bard.

Sircar shows a wooden tie to governor Viren J. Shah as industrialist S.K. Birla (centre) looks on

Once his suitcase was robbed in a train. He drew the face of a member of the gang for the police. The suitcase was recovered in 22 days.

His skills spread to odd areas too. “The local electrician could not repair our tape recorder because a spare part was out of stock. I created it for him myself.”

After retirement, among his early sales was a set of four wooden ties, to a Germany-bound student. “When he gifted one to his teacher, he was so stunned that he bought the three. The price he paid for the ties I had sold for Rs 100-150 covered his airfare!” The student placed orders for 10 more ties and thus his pastime took a commercial turn.

“People say this is a talent. But I think it is a matter of patience. As for the designs, I get them in my sleep. I scribble them as soon as I wake up,” he says, self-effacingly. His products have sold at various fairs. But now, at the threshold of 80, his pride is his students, who are in turn training and employing others to carry on the legacy of his craft.

The Sircars shifted to Salt Lake in 1999. He laments that the township is not as neighbourly as Chetla was. “But during power cuts, when I would play the mandolin, there would be requests in the dark from other houses for specific songs,” he laughs.