Love affair with small things
Fit for a miniature Indian highway:
Mark Magnier in Dhanaula, India
He's watched the cheap toys come in, a flimsy, mass-produced
onslaught. That's of little concern. He's doing something more
meaningful, something that will last.
Balwinder Singh slowly works the sandpaper around the cargo bay of
the miniature wooden truck, one of dozens in his roadside store. Horse
carts are the most difficult, he says, with their rounded staves. Then
there are the John Deere tractors, the combines, the gasoline trucks,
reflecting the rich agricultural land that is Punjab, India's
breadbasket.
Balwinder Singh, 32, works on the wooden trucks he has lovingly
made at the edge of a national highway. Picture by Mark Magnier,
Los Angeles Times |
You play with what you see, and this is what children see.
For 17 years, the former furniture maker has been selling his
diminutive wooden wares along the roadside, carefully arranged in lines,
orderly, never honking or cutting each other off, in contrast to the
real versions rumbling by a few feet away.
Over those years, the town of Dhanaula became locally famous for the
brightly painted toys, and soon shopkeepers started coming from miles
around to buy wholesale.
"Chinese toys have cheap electronics that break within a few days,"
says Gurpreet Singh Bagga, who buys for his shop 50 miles away. "And
it's good to have things made in India for Indians. People get jobs."
As business grew, the 32-year-old Singh drew in his family members,
employing his brother to cut the wood, his wife to sand and buff, his
children to paint, producing an average of five a day. "It's good - now
the family can work together," he says.
He even got his father to leave his day-labourer job and become chief
salesman, although truth be told, he's no Dale Carnegie, never
suggesting the customer buy a second one, take the more expensive one,
consider starting a collection. "No, we wouldn't do that sort of thing,"
says the polite, distinguished Beant Singh, 50. "They just buy what they
want."
These days their biggest customers are city dwellers, nostalgic for a
rural India they no longer know, and the occasional truck driver looking
for a replica of his own belching truck, minus the dents and dirt. For
locals, his toys seem too much like everyday life, the younger Singh
reckons.
Singh is part of a long tradition of Indian toy makers, some of whom
have passed on their craft from generation to generation. Archaeological
evidence records ingenious Indus Valley playthings dating back 5,000
years.
One of India's most famous toys, ordered by an 18th century king,
Tipu Sultan, and now in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, features an
almost life-size mechanical wooden tiger mauling a British soldier. The
sultan, who was no fan of the British colonizers, designed it so that
when a small crank is turned, it emits a roar, and then the sound of a
(British) moan as the soldier's hand covers his mouth.
As potential customers slow down for a look, Singh says, he'll size
them up. If they're in a posh Mercedes and don't know the value of a
rupee, he'll add a little onto the price, up to 50 percent on the toys,
which sell from $1.50 to $6. Occasionally, a high-end collector will
request a special-order model with plush seats and working doors, which
he'll sell for upward of $60.
This love affair with all things small earns the family $150 a month,
not bad for these parts, and it sure beats the hard work of day
labouring. Most of his customers see his wares on the roadside and stop
for an impulse buy. His best allies are children, who make such a ruckus
the parents are forced to turn back. Two kids in the car, even better
for him, especially if the parents don't want to suffer miles of
backseat fighting.
But the parents control the purse strings. "They're very colourful
and I wanted to buy one for my child," says Prem Deep, a lawyer from New
Delhi who stopped to take a look. "But they're a bit expensive, so I'm
going to wait."
The way Singh sees it, his wooden toys are a lot better than those
computer games and virtual world pastimes that leave children
overweight, distracted, harbouring a distant gaze. These make kids move,
run, exercise and let their imagination do the work.
What about his 10-year old son, who paints the orange, blue and green
markings on the toy trucks after school and on weekends?
"He'd rather play with anything but trucks," he says. "He sees so
many of them, he gets sick of them." |