Column after column, I have harped on the point that our museums are without those very people whom it belongs to. For once I have been proven wrong. On a hot May afternoon, Shankar’s International Dolls Museum (SIDM) situated on a noisy and busy Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg was packed with people with a large part of it dominated by kids. They were running, amused and excited, from one corner to another with their mothers trying to control them in vain.
I knew that summer holidays had begun in Delhi schools but I didn't know that it turns into a popular haunt for a lot of kids during this period. “In these two months, we receive more than 100 visitors daily,” says Shanta Srinivasan, advisor, SIDM adding that this is despite the severe parking crunch the area has. “The schools especially have to park their buses at quite a distance and even normal visitors find no place to park. The numbers would only increase with the arrival of Delhi Metro at ITO but where would they park,” asks a concerned Shanta.
Much before these malls came up, SIDM figured even higher in our summer hols must-do list, not to forget the mandatory school trip to the museum. And it is interesting that the 6,700 dolls from all over the world in this 49-year-old museum still manage to attract people.
It was the brainchild of K. Shankar Pillai, an iconic political cartoonist, who wanted this place to be a window to the world for a child. So, he began collecting dolls from every country he visited as part of Prime Minister's entourage. And a lot of these vintage dolls are part of the collection like the first doll presented to Shankar or the Balkan doll dressed in a peasant dress gifted by Madam Tito, the first lady of Yugoslavia in 1966 when she visited the museum. Perhaps the oldest in the collection is a Swiss doll lying on a bed made in 1781. Her fragile condition is a giveaway of its history but SIDM is doing well to preserve it.
Dolls of every size, material grace the museum and Shankar’s earnest desire to expose Indian children to the world through these playful representatives reflects through the inclusion of dolls from not just as many countries possible but also unlikely nations like Greenland, Panama, Guatemala, Bolivia, Botswana, Cuba, Lithuania, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan etc. And they are all works of art. If the highlight of Greenland dolls is the use of bead work, the dolls from Denmark and Belgium stand out for their daintiness. Hungarian dolls decked up in traditional finery convey their culture well and so do Portuguese dolls. Ceramic dolls, wax dolls, wooden dolls, clay dolls, string dolls, plastic dolls… the variety is baffling and so are the expressions they bear. While Bulgarian dolls with just the eyes in the name of facial expressions, Spanish dolls wearing flamenco costumes exude glamour, tribal dolls from New Zealand and Australia have a playful innocence about them.
This vast collection has been built painstakingly, says Shanta. “It isn’t easy any longer to acquire these dolls as these dignitaries have stopped visiting the museum due to the security and parking hassles. Now we write to the embassies and they also approach us and that’s how we get it. But it doesn’t happen very often. It was with some difficulty that I got some dolls from Kuwait.” A set of 87 Japanese dolls gifted to SIDM almost two years ago is the latest addition and before that was a set of South Korean dolls that came its way. “What we also do is an exchange programme. We have an in-house doll-making workshop and we exchange these Indian dolls for foreign dolls with interested collectors.” While storage isn’t a problem, display is. “Even though they are in glass cases but being situated in such a polluted area, dust reaches them and the cleaning has to be just so careful. And dolls do have a shelf life. Yet another challenge is how to redo the costume of say a Bolivian doll because we don’t know that weave or pattern,” shares Shanta.
(The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday. The entry fee is Rs.17 for an adult and Rs. 6 for a child. The ticket counter closes at 5:30 p.m.)
OTHER MUSEUM HIGHLIGHTS
A section is dedicated to authentic Indian costume dolls made by Shankar’s Dolls Designing and Production Centre and unique among them is men and women of India, Brides of India.
Japanese dolls in royal kimonos
UK dolls from the Queen’s collection costumed as Shakespeare, Henry VIII, characters from nursery rhymes and Alice in Wonderland.
