Bamboo strips were her toys in childhood. As she grew up, the mats and baskets she weaved became her constant companions and later her partners in earning a livelihood. Naturally, Gangamma Gouda has a unique bond with bamboo like many other bamboo artisans in Mumbai.
However for Gangamma, living with her family in Parel, the bond with her craft goes beyond earning a livelihood. This is why despite the dwindling status of the craft, she refuses to quit.
Most of her co-artisans have either resigned to their fate or moved out to greener pastures. Nor are they ready to upgrade their skill to meet new market demands. Even her own sons do not share her view and are employed otherwise.
But Gangamma 50-plus and a grandmother now, has acquired new weaving skills and new product designs. For the past five years, she has been attending workshops and training sessions conducted by Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai, which is trying to revitalise the craft in India.
Now working at IDC on a contract basis, Gangamma is also part of their training team. She has been travelling with the team all over India and passing on her new skills to bamboo craftspersons in Kerala, West Bengal, Orissa, Nagaland and Manipur.
“Gangamma has not only learnt the new techniques quickly but is also good at imparting them to other artisans – particularly women. She is equally adept at handling men who are not used to learning from a woman,” endorses Professor A G Rao, IDC, who is in-charge of the training programme.
And all this has not been easy for this illiterate and diminutive craftswoman who was born and brought up in a small village near Bellary in Karnataka where women education and liberation were unheard of. Even in Mumbai where she moved in 1972 after marriage, women in her community rarely venture out of home for work leave alone travel outside.
But Gangamma who has learnt to read and write Kannada, Marathi and Hindi and has even managed to pick up few words in English, has always been gutsy and enterprising. She once used the Madh Island beach to execute a large order for bamboo mats as space in her hutment nearby (where she lived then) were insufficient.
“If you really want to do something, nothing can stop you,” she says. Now Gangamma wants her community to learn and create new products which are in demand in urban market.
“Learning new skills and creating products is the only way to revive bamboo craft,” declares Gangamma whose attempts to teach new skills to women artisans in her area have not been successful so far.
“To them, time spent on learning is time lost in earning. Besides, making new products is more difficult and time consuming than baskets. It also requires some investment as we will need some simple machines, tool kits, and space to store raw material and finished products. The only solution is to form a group, jointly hire a place and work under one banner,” she explains.
She is now trying to persuade a few women to form a group but says that only one has agreed so far.
But Gangamma, as ever, is not giving up. “Even if I get four to five women and start the project, others when they see it working will automatically join in,” she says confidently.