Occupation: Sells bomma kolus
I come from a family of artisans in Karamana who specialise in making bomma kolus. I studied up till class 10. My family had a stall near the Padmanabha Swamy Temple, which sold our goods. However, due to the widening of the road, the increase in traffic, and various other reasons, we had to close shop. That is when I began selling bomma kolus in East Fort; I have been selling the figurines at East Fort for 14 years now during the Navarathri season.
My family and I have discontinued making dolls and have started buying them from places like Tiruchirapalli and Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. My family and I stopped making them as there are very few hands now to make them and because materials used to mould them are hard to come by in the city.
Earlier we would get a reasonable profit from our sale of bommas, but these days profit is marginal. Those who buy bommas are mostly those who want to add to their collection of dolls or want a whole new collection. Dolls representing mythological characters and the Hindu pantheon are in demand. A standard collection in every household is the figurines of Lekshmi, Saraswathy and Ganapathy. Figures of Ganapathy are popular as he comes in various avatars.
For the images of the goddesses, only the backgrounds change. It is rare for us to have left over bommas. If there are any, we pack them up carefully and set it aside for the following year.
Although it is tradition for my family and I to put up a bomma kolu during Navarathri, we rarely find the time to set one up. I leave for work at 8 a.m. and return home at 8 p.m. The day before Navarathri, I will be here till 10 p.m. as there will be last minute shoppers. When I am not dealing with dolls during the Navarathri season, I sell vegetables at East Fort. My wife, Selvi, and son Boban help me out. Boban drives an auto rickshaw; selling vegetables and bomma kolus are an additional income for him.
(A weekly column on the men and women who make Thiruvananthapuram what it is)
