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Three Stones to Mark a Fire: India's Forgotten Artists
| Article
# : |
17682 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1990 |
3,638 Words |
| Author
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Peter Gorman
Peter Gorman, a free-lance writer and collector for the
American Museum of Natural History, has researched and
written
extensively about the peoples of the Amazon. |
First light in Delhi. Already camel carts and sacred cows begin to crowd the streets. Taxis, bicycles, auto rickshaws, and buses fill the city air with the din of their perpetual honking - modern-day roosters announcing the dawn. And, in Shadipur Depot, a sprawling slum just outside Delhi's center, the families of 350 of India's traditional artists wake as well.
Groups of brightly dressed women carrying water jugs on their heads walk down the rutted, serpentine main street of the depot toward the community water pump. Children are everywhere, ragtag and beautiful; groups of men gather around the water pipes, discussing the issues of the day. The air is charged with smoke from morning fires and the smells of breakfast teas and boiling meat.
From one of the common alleys that run between the haphazardly placed mud huts of the shantytown, an elderly magician and his son emerge onto the main street, carrying their props; they are headed to the fort in Old Delhi, where they will perform today. Nasir Kahn prods a reluctant dancing bear into a waiting taxi for the ride to the train station, where he hopes to earn his day's wage from the tourists there. Moments later, Giarsa Natt, laden with ropes and old bicycle tires, hurries onto a bus, his beautiful, contortionist daughter Suresh close behind him. Within a few minutes, others join them: musicians and jugglers, puppeteers and folk dancers, flocking toward the crowded highway that runs alongside Shadipur. This is reveille at the Bhule Bisre Kalakar, the Cooperative of Forgotten and Neglected Artists.
Bhule Bisre Kalakar: Cooperative of Forgotten and Neglected
... (1965 of 20880 Characters)
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