With Diwali hardly a couple of weeks to go, feeble hands work tirelessly on the potter’s wheel at the faceless congested lanes of Kummari Veedhi, the potter’s colony. Standing testimony to a rich past of the ancient profession of artistic expression, this colony of traditional potters becomes busy ahead of the Festival of Lights.
This year, traditional potters are anticipating a bright Diwali as compared to the last couple of years as the collective clamour to move away from Chinese lamps and lights towards clay deepams gains momentum. There is a pan-India movement against buying Chinese goods after the September 18 Uri attack by terrorists from Pakistan, a country that Beijing continues to support. Local potters believe that the preference for earthern lamps will improve their business this year that had come down considerably over the years, forcing many to shift to other vocations or take up other work to supplement their income.
“We are hopeful of a good business this year. We started making deepams from last month itself,” says Srikakulam Pardes (84), as he walks with difficulty along the corridors of his dark house. All over his cleared frontage are serried rows of terracotta deepams in varied shapes and sizes. He has been into this business from his childhood and today is one of the very few traditional potters of the colony who continues to eke out living by churning the potter’s wheel.
Each potter’s family of the colony is making over one lakh clay deepams this year, a marked increase in numbers from the past two to three years.
Most of the other families who live in Kummari Veedhi get clay deepams from neighbouring places of Anakapalle and Yelamanchili and the more decorative ones from Chennai during this time of the year. But a severe space constraint has added to the woes of the traditional potters. “We can’t produce in bulk. Where is the space to keep all the pots to dry?” he adds.
K. Pydamma, another resident of the colony, says six to eight years ago there were at least 25 potter families that were actively involved in the pottery business. “Not any more. The middlemen, designer lifestyle stores and Chinese lamps have taken over from the traditional craftsman. Our children are not interested in the traditional potter business because of the fading returns. Most of them have taken up work for gas cylinder delivery and other jobs where they get a better income,” she says.
Her husband K. Devudu is among the few potters who keep the tradition alive in the hope that earthen lamps and allied clay goods will make a comeback.
“This year, the situation is a bit different. Already, we have seen interest from organisations and wholesale dealers for purchasing diyas,” say the traditional potters.
However, in the case of flower pots the business of potters has been hit post cyclone Hudhud. “We used to make 20,000 flower pots earlier every Diwali. After Hudhud, we hardly sell 5,000 flower pots now,” adds Pardes.
