Mumbai's Kumbharwada is now city of lamps

Right next to Dev Anand M Vagria’s Jai Ambe pottery shop in Kumbharwada sits a massive pile of rubbish. A mobile dumpster shovels some of it off the ground with an ear-searing scrape and a million little flies shoot off in all directions. A woman in her 30s, carrying a Gucci clutch, is at the shop. But the nuisance is no distraction as she goes on insisting on a particular kind of five-sided diya that Vagria is unable to provide.

The whole of Mumbai heads to Kumbharwada for diyas in the run-up to Diwali. The heat, the stench, the flies, none of it matters. No one — the customers, the shopkeepers, even the toddlers running back and forth between the kilns and the shops — has any time to waste. It’s serious business.

Vagria, 45, says on a good day, he makes up to Rs50,000 in the lead up to Diwali—a stunning change of pace from the Rs2,000, he manages during the rest of the year.

Having been in the pottery business for 25 years, Vagria has seen it change quite a bit. “Ten years ago, we used to make only sada diyas (plain clay lamps). Today, you have over 200 varieties to choose from,” he says.

His shop is littered with diyas of varied shapes, sizes and colours — star-shaped, clam-shaped, intricate domes the size of a small cat, fixed up with mirrors and glitter, even diyas shaped like elephants. The whole street is a rush of colour and shine.

Behind the shop is Vagria’s distinctly dull and colourless house-cum-working quarters, where drying diyas line the walls. And the roles are clearly defined: women of the family paint the diyas, and the men either man the ‘front desk’ or work the massive cotton-topped kilns.

In a small shanty room, covered with calendars of various deities, Nilesh Babutak, 25, is engaged in the hypnotic process of moulding shapes from a spinning lump of clay, specially imported from Thangadh near Rajkot in Gujarat. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s a cakewalk. “Everyone starts with the small diyas. You make mistakes in the beginning, the clay breaks, but you learn. Then, as your hands get set, you move on to making the more intricate vessels.”

But elephant-shaped diyas are a challenge even skilled potters can’t stand up to. Vagria says the more intricate designs are made in press-mould factories in Virar and Naigaon. To cater to the demands of an ever-growing customer base, even the potters of Kumbarvada have had to outsource.

At the side of his shop, nearer to the pile of garbage, lie a couple of crates with unpainted, red-clay diyas. But Vagria says the plain diyas do quite well in terms of sales. “Older people want to buy the plain ones. The younger crowd looks for something different. So, we have to provide varieties of shapes and colours.”

It’s the variety that gives Vagria the confidence to brush off the impending threat from imported plastic diyas from China. “That’s never going to catch on in Mumbai. It’s never going to replace the clay diya,” he says nonchalantly.

There’s no reason to doubt his claim. Vagria is a fourth-generation potter, after all. His family has been in the business of moulding clay into a thousand different shapes for 160 years.

His children, though, are not keen to carry the family business forward. His son’s doing a BCom course and his daughter is in junior college. Doesn’t he worry that there’ll be no one to look after the business once he retires?

Vagria flashes a pan-stained grin and says, “I have six brothers and they all have children. Someone or the other will pick it up. It’s my great-grandfather’s shop. Don’t worry, we’re not going to shut it down.”