Nothing illuminating for potters this Diwali

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 5

With Covid-19 taking the sheen off the festive season, very few people are coming out to buy diyas to decorate their houses. The sales have gone down severely as compared to the last year. Though the diya makers have been trying their best to make their diyas sell, nothing much has been achieved. The artisans rue this time, their orders got reduced by 50 per cent.

Bhagwan Dass (61), a potter who lives in Kumhar Mandi near Sofi village in Jalandhar Cantonment shared that he had been into this work for the past 40 years, but had never seen any such a situation.

“The festive season brings cheer to us, but the muted celebrations have taken a toll on us. We keep waiting for the festivals so that we could earn something, but this year has been different,” he shared.

The diya makers shared that people were ordering diyas and they were making the same on order, but not the way they used to do in the previous years. “On normal days, we would start making diyas near Baisakhi in April, but this time, we started in July when there was a little relaxation in the lockdown. We also faced issues in getting the soil required to make diyas.

There is an extended family of about 100 persons in Kumhar Mandi that remains extremely busy these days. Everyone, ranging form the 90-year-olds to the 25-year-olds and even school-going children, remain busy making dough of clay, churning out designer diyas, drying them, painting them and taking them to the shopkeepers for sale.

Dinesh, a 25-year-old said their diyas go to other states too. “Even this time, we are receiving the orders, but not in the numbers we used to receive. There is nothing like before,” he said.