The Starving Street Artists

I had gotten free from work at the time just as planned, and had with me enough minutes by the hour to take a hurried trip to the ‘Dilli Haat’. Something earthy to add around my collection of art was the thought that got me into a shady parking spot for the car in less than fifteen minutes. The place is a must-see for a foreigner’s glimpse into the Indian art, craft and heritage homing crafty kiosks exhibiting the diversities in art across the various states of India.

A woman curled up behind a heap of what I presumed as sub-standard or who knows even stolen pieces of craft, set up a shabby shop on the littered narrow stone steps leading to the ethnic ‘Dilli Haat’. I’ve almost always thought of such tattered street sellers as some stone-broke junkies and grumbled to myself over such sellers as an unwelcoming site. These ragged encroachers need to be looked away from, and why do the authorities even allow such people to spatter around the passage to the shining legacy of India showcased inside,” I questioned myself.

With an air of conceitedness for the peddlers, I wend my way to the passageway in my black and white checked pencil skirt and high stilts. To add to, what may fall within the judicious definition of an act of snobbery, I had my driver toeing behind me for lifting heavy bags just in case I decided to pick up some dhurries, brass artifacts or hand printed cotton dohars. But pretty much as it always ends up, a disinterested tour around the same old craft bazaar, with nothing enticing enough to slow down my stride, got me at the exit gate sooner than I thought. So that was the “Dilli Haat” discovered again!

I walked past the street vendor again, this time on my way out. Strangely, she didn’t seem to be calling out the attention of the visitors or giving away any gestures for luring buyers with appeals of bargains, something I tolerantly survived inside. Curiosity killed the cat and I had myself digging through her trove of goodies with an air of feigned disinterest. And Oh! Something familiar was stashed in there- a paper mache pen holder with a solid cream base and black hand-painted depictions that had cost me Rs. 450 at Fab India. “How much for this one?”, I asked her holding the piece loosely in my hand ready to be dropped at the spell of a no good deal price. With hesitation in her voice over my presumed rejection to an over- price, she quoted Rs. 60 for the piece. Ah! and so much for setting up the pieces of craft on walnut polished shinning racks in air-conditioned showrooms with essential oil fragrance floating in the air, pepped-up with the accented English of the elite South Delhi crowd, somewhere and everywhere around the plush shopping spaces such as the Greater Kailash N Block!

As I searched into the stark resemblance of what I had earlier bought, I stared in disbelief at the replica I tossed around for no traces of incongruity. Just then I spotted watercolors, brushes, and limited supplies of what an artist would need. Could she be painting these by any chance, my bewildered mind preparing for a surprise?

The seller eagerly walked me through a bowl, shaped out of beaten paper pulp hardened for the solidarity of wood, to be filled in with colors from bright and gaudy to dull off-whites and black. A tectonic shift in how I perceived the seller a while ago got me looking at her work from the perspective of an artist. An artist who was lost in the invisible tribe of more than one million street vendors. A woman, so gifted at processing the paper Mache articles with myriad shapes coming alive with the dash of kaleidoscopic colors.

The darkly ironic existence of the extremely talented underpaid starving artists was something I just had to write about. I asked the woman if I could take a picture and she gleefully agreed. While I tried to capture her picture with her handicrafts around her, I could sense the typical mind mongering of the passers-by who looked at me in foolish amusement as though I were some foreigner trying to document the poverty sketch of India.

I picked up a couple of pieces and paid her more than what she asked for, with an honorable intention of squaring her permission to use her picture for my blog. With a beaming face, she posed for a picture that was radiating with contentment. I knew I’d never see her again but wanted her to know that I would be posting her picture on my blog site. As I turned away from her to head back, I took to the realization of why would she really care about this blogging thing in her elemental life where affording a day-to-day subsistence must be an everyday challenge for her. Just then, I heard her call me out. With a brimming smile, she added, “Gauri Devi, is my name”-just in case I was serious about writing and posting about her online.