The shifting strand of Pottertown

Kumortuli’s fame is in its transience. Like the Spring Flower, it bursts into activity, fame and business for no more than three months in a year. Only that it does so during autumn and not spring. But in that short span, it enjoys a lot of attention. Or so has been the case for the last two centuries or so. So much so that over the years, Kumortuli has become a subculture, the Vatican in the heart of Calcutta. The more secular of the lot, with a delicious twist of literary concoction, may want to call it the Potter’s Town with an only oblique reference to the boy magician. But the magic wand is no less active in this small colony of idol makers than it is in the portly bestsellers about Hogwarts. And like the proverbial rabbit in the magician’s hat, Kumortuli vanishes into oblivion from both public and government memory for the rest of the year after it routinely engages and enthrals a retinue of visitors, enthusiasts, curators, photographers and the like in the short, seasonal burst of ingenuity that is full of its unique brand of clay-modelling. 

The ancestry of  is as shifting as the slippery streets that thrall hundreds of studios inside the colony. It is said that a group of potters from Krishnagore in Nadia migrated to the city, in search of better livelihood carrying nothing apart from their skills in earthen pottery. This was three centuries ago. They had settled in what was then Gobindapur on the banks of Hooghly and only after their land was acquired by the British to build Fort William, they shifted to what was then Sutanuti. This was before Calcutta was born out of conjoining Gobindapur, Sutanuti and Kolikata. They stayed put in that land through the last three centuries, able to dodge the shifting pulls of time and the gradual enlargement of the city around them. More the city ate into their original habitation, more the potters shrank further into their domain; inching towards the attainment of space that was almost four-dimensional. 

Nothing else explains the almost surreal lack of legroom inside the studios. Unless one records with minute affection the entire process of idol-making, it is impossible to deconstruct how the artists make room for them and their creations during the preparations for festivity every autumn. But they do, with effortless nonchalance. 

This nonchalance cuts across their existence as a whole. Apart from the shrinking settlement, the potters are unperturbed, in no particular order, about the state of their living condition, which is, to put it mildly, nonexistent. They are similarly non-plussed about the generosity of their skills, abundantly in display in their creations every year. They make no fuss either about the seasonal nature of their job. But then, the last may not be entirely true. 

Several casual conversations with popular kumors revealed a streak of insecurity about theme pujas. For, the trend of themes not only create a gallery of eye-popping tableaux across the city but they have over the years triggered an exodus of orders out of Kumortuli to professional artists and art college alumni. Potters in Kumortuli, whose roots are in family and folk art, rather than in sophisticated training, find it a hard bargain. They consider this threat as existential as it subverts, first, the seasonal nature of their job and second, cannibalises on their most treasured template: The Durga idol. 

Themes thankfully are a product of a very sophisticated urbanity, which is uncommon and in any case, Kumortuli is really under no threat. But they are in no mood to see any further erosion in their trade. 

What also bothers the potter community is the reluctance of the younger generations to take over from the older one. There are many studios in which the younger Pal, notwithstanding the charms of easy degrees, which they had doubtlessly secured, were seen helping out their father in the last minute preparations. Some were clearly an apprentice. Some were there just to ensure their ageing fathers see through the madcap last few weeks before the festival begins. But in many others, the older of the lot were seen toiling alone and were probably the last custodian of the family to have hoisted himself inside the sub-town of itinerant take-homes. 

The Hooghly keeps a vigil over Kumortuli after having found this unique township a steady company for so many years now. The river also lends itself to the yearly recycling of its soil that is shaped into those amazing models of clay before they are consigned back to the waters. This cycle, pregnant with both fatigue and aura, inevitably mirrors Kumortuli’s shifting and seasonal nature. If and when decrepit Kumortuli finally makes way for a stable brick-and-mortar edition, whose plans have been finalised, it will no doubt improve the odds and ends, but will somewhat strip it of its legendary fondness for transience.