S. Sathya is a gardener for all seasons — all but this horrific season.
Out of work due to the lockdown, she could wait it out, letting her family get by on PDS supplies. Or she could create her own work-from-home scenario.
So there she is, a nursery worker before lockdown, who has turned to basket-making from home to make ends meet.
Here is the unlikelihood of it.
When she was considering trying basket-weaving as an alternative, lockdown work, one thought popped up, and it was massively dissuasive. The last time she knitted a wire basket was around two-and-a-half decades ago.
“At craft classes in school, I learnt to weave a wire basket. It was a long time ago, and what I had learnt was just a hazy memory,” says Sathya, a 41-year-old now.
But incredibly enough, she bridged the yawning practice-gap.
“Recently, after the lockdown, I asked my son Pughazhendhi to play basket-weaving tutorials on his smartphone. It all came back to me.”
Buying the wire to make baskets was a hurdle, but she managed to find one source who sold her all the wire they had. When she runs out of wire, the hurdle may heave into view again.
Patient craftsmanship
The plastic wire baskets made by Sathiya hardly suggest they came from hands more trained to plant saplings than plait wires.
Neatly executed, the knots are unobtrusive, and the patterns suggest patient craftsmanship. Considering the circumstances that led to this work, and under which Sathiya is living, this seems a case of inimitable professionalism.
The baskets vary in price, depending on size.
“There are baskets priced ₹ 300 and above, and these are the bigger baskets, which could be used for shopping. The order could specify the size of the basket. There are also smaller baskets, which can be used to carry lunch boxes, and these are priced around ₹ 200,” she explains
Marketing the baskets was going to be a steep challenge during lockdown, for three obvious reasons.
One, a wire basket is likely to be the last thing on any wish list now. Two, delivery of the baskets is possible only after lockdown is lifted, or more realistically, after a level of normality returns. Three, simply because it is lockdown.
The irony is that, for Sathya, it is a business for the lockdown — a desperate business at that. It is in fact a family’s hope for self-sufficiency.
Fortunately for the gardener turned basket maker, there are people out there waiting to reach out to the Sathiyas of the world who may have huge odds arrayed against them, but who still keep a positive outlook and do best what they can in the given situation, so that any help from outside proves deserved and meaningful.
Sathya is a resident of Sholinganallur, and Meera Rajagopalan, a communications consultant in the social sector, who lives in one of the gated communities in the locality, learnt about Sathiya and her wire baskets.
“Meera amma has been telling the people that she knows, about these baskets and helping me sell them,” says Sathya. Recently, Meera made a post about the lockdown basket maker on Facebook, even offering to help in the delivery of the baskets, but after lockdown.
Future prospects
Would this “stopgap” business extend beyond lockdown?
Sathya points out that she and her husband are accustomed to working in the nursery space – on East Coast Road, nurseries grow out of ears – where they found work as helpers, with their payment being calculated against the days they put in.
They are most likely to go back to it, once normality returns.
Says Sathya, “Now, I weave a basket in the leisure I find after having carried out household chores. So, I can make only one bag a day. Sometimes, it takes two days. Therefore, it does not make a sustainable business option. However, when I have grown old and can’t work in the gardens anymore, I will take the wires and start weaving baskets again.”
Sathya can be contacted at 9841592480.
(If you are aware of similar lockdown initatives, write to us at downtownfeedback@thehindu.co.in)