Lest the wheel stops spinning

The journey of a pottery enthusiast, Rekha Bajpe Aggarwal, who is working to prevent the death of the traditional art

Photograph: Kamal Kishore/Reuters

Three years ago, a potter from Lisbon in Portugal told Rekha Bajpe Aggarwal that he was very keen to see an Indian potter working on a traditional wheel. Aggarwal, who is the trustee of the Delhi Blue Pottery Trust, confidently took him to the nearest potters' village. "To my utter shock, there was not a single traditional wheel in use in the whole village of 200 potter families," she says. They had all switched to electric wheels.

Flustered, she went to the Uttam Nagar Prajapati Colony that once housed 5,000 potter families. It was the same story here as well. "There was no traditional wheel to even look at," she says. The old wheels just took up too much space, were harder to operate and were not portable -- problems that were all solved by the electric wheel. "'Another piece of our cultural heritage was lost,' I thought to myself," recalls Aggarwal. "I had photographed potters on traditional wheels here about 10 years ago. How things have changed!" She realised that while it was not possible to hold time back, what she could do was at least preserve the witnesses, "the sentinels of the past". That was when she decided to start working on a project to document, preserve, promote and sustain traditional pottery. "Traditional pottery is, after all, practised only in India," she says.

Thus began her trying, but tireless, journey. She has since ploughed a lonely furrow by trudging to Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Kashmir where she met dozens of potters and found pockets where traditional pottery is still practised with a local touch. "I documented what they do and filmed them at their native places while they freely spoke about their work," she says. Today, industrialisation has brought in plastic and steel items that have almost strangled traditional pottery. "It is important to encourage traditional potters to continue their work by improving their talent, modernising what they produce and by helping them shape their sale strategies," says Aggarwal who believes that the potters will continue in their chosen line only if they can earn well from it.

Aggarwal has been collecting samples and pictures and filming different methods of creating pottery as well as studying the various kinds of clay used in the states she has been to. Outside Amer in Rajasthan, for example, she found that a lot of sand is mixed with the clay. In Haryana, she saw "antiques" being created.

In Rajasthan, she met Jamnalal Kumhar, a 17th generation potter who does beautiful tiles in relief. In Varanasi, she came across modern work on clay. In Azamgarh, she found bracelets, bangles, earrings and pendants made of terracotta. Kerala was to show her the chattis, which are nearly flat-bottomed tavas (skillets) with slightly raised sides made of rough clay. Because these are not fired at a high temperature, they heat up faster.

"While researching in one particular area of Rajasthan, I found that pottery is used only for storage," she says. "And barely 50 km away, the tava is a pottery specialty. I am going there soon to document it."

Besides documenting traditional pottery, Aggarwal is now also teaching the traditional way of pottery to villagers to revive this dying art. A traditional potter produces many pieces, but no two are exactly alike. "I teach them exactness, because every piece of a six-piece coaster set has to look exactly the same," she explains. Help from outside is also on the cards. Aggarwal is inviting experts who deal in different kinds of ceramics to train the urban-traditional potter. All these stages and processes will also be documented.

If there is one regret she has, it is that nobody has a nationwide perspective on India's pottery. She hopes to change that.