IDOL MAKERS OF KOLKATA / 2005

The clay idol-makers of Kolkata practice a unique art— an art that comes with the promise of dissolution and regeneration—a metaphor of life itself, with its impermanence and ebb-and-flow. The painstaking and elaborate process of the making of the idols, the festivities that grow around the worship of the deities that these idols represent; and the ultimate farewell of the deity in immersion, when the straw-wood-clay structures that typify divinity, disintegrate and dissolve in water and earth—are woven together in an exploration of the lives of these master craftsmen who go through hardships and privation in order to be true to their art.