Just around the corner where the Vytilla Hub empties into Thykoodam, there are two makeshift tents by the roadside - tarpaulin sheets roughly thrown over wooden poles. Beneath them sits bare-chested, 63-year-old Ayyappan from Palakkad.
Long, wide strips of bamboo lie beside him and with a sharp chisel and a stone for support; he cuts each bamboo piece into thin pieces. His grandson nails the smaller strips into a criss-cross pattern and that becomes the roof of the Christmas crib his son and son-in-law are crafting.
As the traffic stalls by their tent, customers get off buses to haggle for the finished cribs stacked outside. A seller of Christmas caps at the junction too directs people to their stall. The cribs come at Rs. 90 for small ones and Rs. 150 for the larger ones with hay-thatched roofs. “It takes about half an hour between us to make one crib,” says Ayyappan.
The family comes to Kochi every year, a week before Christmas, sets up shop at different spots each year, eats, sleeps and works out their tents for two weeks. They bring their wood and tools with them, and often the semi-complete walls and roofs of the cribs as well. “Closer to Christmas it gets too busy to make the entire crib from scratch here,” says Ayyappan. “So we bring the different parts with us and assemble the final crib here.”
A day could see them make anywhere between 30 and 50 cribs, and almost as many are sold daily, says Ayyappan. Back in Palakkad for the rest of the year, the family makes their living weaving baskets and trays from bamboo for the local vegetable and flower markets. Christmas is a chance for them to earn more than usual through selling cribs in Kochi, says Ayyappan. And his additional Christmas gift? Getting to go home on December 25!
