Poor Sale of Idols Worries Artisans in State

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Worshipping being a year-round practice in Assam as is the case in rest of India, idol making is almost a continuous process as one or the other puja keeps coming. However, the biggest festival that the people of the State most look forward to is the grand Durga puja.

Durga puja is not just any other festival for the people of the State. It is a week-long celebration with exciting fairs and impressive deity of the goddess. Artisans of the city prepare months ahead to sculpt magnificent goddess idols that with each year, gets more ambitious in their themes. However, there has been a deviation in the course this year.

Artisans are simply whiling away their time by yawning and stretching as they have hardly any orders even as the Durga Puja is round the corner. According to some local artisans, the various puja mandaps in the city have hired artisans from outside the State to make the idols. Moreover, instead of picking from the idols in the process of making, the various mandaps have hired artisans to build idols in the mandaps itself.

Expressing his concern, a local artisan said: “Even as the Durga puja is right around the corner, till date, no order has been received for idol. By this time, I would usually receive around 100 to 150 orders. Punya mati, an integral part of the idol-making process is not easy to procure. The soil has to be collected from brothels and the brothel in Silchar has emerged as a source across several States in the Northeast. Procuring punya mati from there is also a costly affair and we invest a lot in making the idols. Now I can only hope that my idols sell before the month is over.”

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