Nine Lives(81)

“He looked at it very carefully in silence for a long time. Then he gave some small suggestions for corrections where some of the jewellery was not done exactly right. He said nothing more. I made the corrections as he asked, and the following week we had the eye-opening ceremony.

“The god or goddess only fully enters a new idol when we open his eyes and carve in the pupils—the final piece of carving—and when the appropriate puja is performed. This is the most important and most intense moment. I am human: hard as I try, many times when I am carving I think of sales tax, family problems, getting the car repaired. But when the eyes are opened, and the appropriate mantras are chanted, I forget everything. I am lost to the world. I go into a state approaching meditation. Sometimes the devotees who sponsor the idol become possessed by the goddess, and dance around, speak in strange voices, or go shaking and shivering into a full trance. The priest has to wake them by putting vibhuti on their forehead and lighting a camphor light. This happened only last week: six or seven people who came for the ceremony were possessed, and one of them announced, ‘I am the goddess and have come to solve your problems.’

“On this occasion it was especially intense. My father acted as the priest, invoking the deity to enter the statue, slowly chiselling open the eyes, and I sat there in a state that was part nerves, part excitement and part intense devotion. Only when the ceremony was finished and the deity was awakened did my father say that my workmanship had been perfect, and that he was very proud of me.

“Since then, I have been working continuously for twenty-five years, and still get satisfaction from each and every piece I work on. I never get bored. Sometimes, with a large piece, it can be hard, long, difficult work. My father used to say that the chisel was his teacher. It moves in a way that even we cannot control—the heart is its driver, and God is in the heart. With every piece I try to improve my skills and to design more beautiful images, within the strictures of the shastras. I still have much to learn, and don’t feel that I am yet the equal of my father, still less even comparable to my ancestors. Even now I am adapting the way we do the casting in an attempt to find a way to achieve what they were once able to.

“Of course every human life has its problems, and there are stressful moments. But in general this is a peaceful life. It is also a good business, though I never think of it like that. No one can equal our skills, and so we almost have a monopoly, even though some of our rivals charge half what we do. We are now three brothers and I think forty-eight assistants. Each week we deliver four or five finished idols, and we have a one-year backlog on our books. Even if we were to do only urgent ones we would be busy for three months.”

I asked about the future: would the tradition continue?

“Ah,” he said, his face falling. “That is my only real worry: who knows what will happen after my generation has passed away? My son is saying that he wants to become a computer engineer in Bangalore, and that he will give up the family business, so breaking our lineage. His cousin—my elder brother’s boy—is much the same. He knows the skills here, and can make a decent sculpture, but he is not a master craftsman. I suppose he’s about halfway there. He studied computer science and is now doing a course in business administration. We hope he will come back here, but he’s more interested in the Internet and what I think he calls online sales. He wants to expand the business, but is not really interested in making idols himself.

“When I was a boy my father told me that I would be a Stpathy. It was almost incidental that I wanted to be one myself. He did not give me a choice. I will not do that to my son. You cannot do that today. My son is obsessed with computers—he is always in front of the screen, always playing computer games. Certainly I will make sure that he has this skill—and already he can make good wax models. But if he gets good grades, and has the opportunity to study computer engineering at college, it would be unfair for me to deny him the opportunity he wants. Our work here is very hard. Computer work is not so difficult, and it pays much more.”

I said: “That must worry you very much, after all these generations.”

“I would be telling you a lie if I said I wasn’t upset,” he replied. “We are inheritors of an unbroken tradition, generation after generation, father to son, father to son, for over 700 years. That’s part of what makes a difference with our sculptures. I do feel there is something special in the blood. At some level this is not a skill which can be taught. The blood itself teaches us our craft, just as a fish’s blood teaches it to swim, or a peacock’s blood teaches it to spread its tail. In the West you say art is all about inspiration, not lineage, and it’s true that God can touch anyone, from any background. I’ve seen that with some of our assistants. But you cannot ignore blood, and all those countless generations of skill passed down. Somehow the gods guide us. When he was small—no older than six—my son did a drawing of Shiva of such power it made us all shake. I had very, very high hopes for him.