Lights dim in Kalyan's diya-manufacturing hub

Kalyan's Kala Talao, whose water used to refill steam engines in the British era, has long shed its colonial baggage. The black silt it swallowed for over 150 years is gone now but the name, Black Lake, persists. Opposite this lake, defined by its darkness, sits an annual industry of light called Gujarati Kumbharwada.

For close to 70 years now, this earthy, undulating settlement of droll potters hailing from Saurashtra and Rajkot has been mass-producing lakhs of clay lamps that illuminate city homes during Diwali. Near kilns that resemble small wells, both unlettered women and college-going girls are willing the sun to stay longer as they obsessively paint hundreds of brown lamps into metallic hues. Both hands of the fair, pretty, Gujarati-sari-clad Manju Lad-who is squatting outside her house-have turned as green as The Hulk's. She is dunking a gauze into liquid "pulp colour" and dabbing it over a pallette-sized ornate brown diya-one of many fancy ones bought on wholesale rates from Dharavi. "I try to get 300 painted in a day," says Manju. The heat makes her chiffon sari stick to her body and sitting for hours sometimes causes her to pop a painkiller for her aching knees but at a profit of Rs 5 to Rs 10 per lamp, her ten-year-old home enterprise-a joint venture with her sister-in-law-helps the family meet sundry Diwali expenses. "My father-in-law is paralysed, my mother-in-law is bed-ridden, my kids go to college, my husband works and I'm illiterate," says the fast-talking Manju.

Unlike its bigger, older and richer counterpart in Dharavi-whose kumbharwada is the stuff of slum tourism-the 67-year-old legacy of this low-key potters' colony in the outskirts of Mumbai is not well-known. The brick-and-mortar shanties began life as tents when a Gujarati potter, Damabhai, from Saurashtra moved to Kalyan with his family in 1951 and built kilns. A farmer in Nashik would send him mounds of mud in bullock carts and the men and women would sift it in a pit, dampen it, soften it with their legs, make balls of clay and fashion pots and lamps on wheels. It was hard labour which, in time, promised profits. This seduced neighbours and relatives from Rajkot to migrate.

Today, an electric potter's wheel has replaced the manual one and mud arrives in a pickup truck instead of on bulls. It's time for the fourth generation to take over but the lack of manpower, rising costs of raw material (mud now costs Rs 1000 per load) and the extensive labour involved have meant that the educated, motorbike-riding crop of software engineers and commerce students, is not keen on "getting their clothes dirty," as Damabhai's grandson, Dhanjibhai, puts it. "Back in the day, 50 families used to make diyas," he says. "Today, only 15 do."

One of them is the Prajapati household which makes a profit of 25 per cent during Diwali from painting over 50,000 diyas per season. Its 48-year-old patriarch, Mahendra, is now standing barefoot inside a grave-sized rectangular pit in front of his home, pants folded upto his knees. "It's nearly ten hours of work in the month before Diwali," says Mahendra, sprinkling ash under his feet to avoid slipping in the pit. He then bends to scoop up wet mud from the pit and collects it into a heap that the frail 73-year-old Kanjibhai Prajapati will soon stomp for hours into smooth surrender.

At 73, he continues to do what he has been doing since age 15: press mud with his legs and then rip off chunks of dried earth with his calloused hands so that they can be turned into smooth clay balls that will yield pots and lamps. While monsoon spells leisure time for him, the lead-up to Diwali is exhausting for Kanjibhai who volunteers his services at three houses for Rs 200 to Rs 500 per day. The sun makes his head swirl. His toenails have chipped from braving cuts from stray pebbles and glass shards and recently, when a two-inch nail bit into his big toe, he had to get a tetanus shot. "Anyone else would run from this job," says the father of four, who believes the industry will "die within five years" because of the next generation of "office types who like to sit in the AC".

Yet, for now, the lure of pocket money has caused giggly college girls to congregate under the corrugated roof of the Prajapati household. Having returned from tuitions, they press cones filled with colour over the rims of fancy lamps to embellish them with details-a job that promises them Rs 100 per 40 lamps. Humour helps them get by. "We do the hard work. He counts the money," says Jayshri Prajapati, introducing her brother-in-law Nilesh Solanki, who proceeds to light up the house with cackles by pointing out everyone's "selfish" reasons for participating. "He's doing it for his birthday," says Nilesh, pointing to 19-year-old Samarth Prajapati, who is packing diyas.. "And she," he says, referring to his five-year-old daughter Mahi, who's also packing diyas today though she generally prefers breaking them, "is doing it for an ice cream."