Quick access :
Abstract
Landscape
Metropolis
Kashmirvalley
Reflections
Watercolours
Photographs
|
 |
| Oriyas | | Size (HxW) : | 32x32 cm | | Style : | realism | | Technic : | - | | Theme : | Character / People | | Category : | Photography | | Year : | 2006 | | Desc. : | Oriyas come from Orissa a state South West of Bengal. They try to stay within their own community even though they speak Bengali very fluently. In Kolkata I have seen them as plumbers, carpenters construction workers,cooks. But one of their major occupation is in Bidi making (also pronounced Biri) a kind of cottage industry. A bidi (from Hindi, pronounced "bee-dee"; also known as biri, beadi, beedie) is a thin, often flavored, Indian cigarette made of tobacco wrapped in a tendu (or temburini; Diospyros melonoxylon roxb.) leaf, and secured with colored thread at one end. Biri is not quite as long as a cigarette. It’s perhaps third its size and tenth its price. In a typical Oriya Pan/ cigatette/Biri shop you can see them huddled under the counter in little spaces rolling their bidis and then tying them in Bundles and baking them on charcoal fired 'Sigri' or 'Unoon' (a metal bucket pasted with clay on inside and outside, divided by a metal grill, or simply some metal rods at about three quarters height of the bucket. The lower part has a cut out from which coal is filled up in the bucket and then lighted. The metal grill part gets hot with the coal fire burning under. Sigri is also used for cooking by putting a pan or other utensil on the grill} There would be a metal net covering a big sigri on which freshly made bundles of Biris are stacked. They will be baked like this till all the moisture is driven out of the leaf and tobacco wrapped in there. They are very skilled at rolling Biris. One of my childhood memories is watching them rolling one Biri after another with fantastic speed. One late January evening,I saw them, bundled up, seating like this on the sidewalk right next to the shop they work at. It was very cold by their standards-60 F. One of them smoking a Biri as you can see in the picture (perhaps one of the many they have rolled) I wondered as I was taking this picture that if between them they had rolled over a million Biris in all these years.... years of working silently, skilfully never complaining, never tiring, never in conflict with anyone, always on a natural high with that sparkle in the eyes. |
|
|
  |
© All of the images on this website are copyrighted original artworks by their author and are protected by international copyright law. No materials in this gallery may be reproduced, copied, downloaded, or used in any form without written permission of the contemporary artist Mukul Pipalia.
|
