F or centuries India has been famous for its handicrafts.

Every state has its own special

craft. Every state has its own special craft. Every town and city has its handicrafts
shops and they display a wide variety of handicrafts from all over the country. There
are things made from ivory, rosewood, silver, gold and silk; carved sandalwood and
brassware, toys and trinkets and every shape and colour. Apart from ornaments, craftsmen
have always made simple everyday things- things used in our daily life.

Many crafts are dying out because the things which used to be made by hand are made
nowadays more easily and more cheaply in factories. Before it is too late, us visit a village in
a remote part of Karnataka, where an ancient woodcraft is still practised.

Papanahalli lies by the side of a wide stretch of water about 100 km from Bangalore. You
should see it first in the early morning, when the rays of the sun are glistening on the water.
At dawn you can hear the singing of the birds and then, if you sit quietly under the great
banyan tree, you can hear whole village waking up.

First a cock crowing, then a small boy driving his goats before him into the forest, then a
woman with a brass pot on her head going down to the stone well. A man appears with a pair
of bullocks, a plough across his shoulders, walking to his fields. Now, if you listen carefully,
you can hear the chip, chip, chip of an axe on wood. Follow the sound. Go up the rocky path
between the thatched houses; with their walls of red mud, and past some tethered bullocks.
As the sound gets louder and you come round the corner of a broken wall, you will see
Gurappa.

He is sitting on the ground; by his side are some logs of wood which he brought yesterday
from the forest. They are freshly cut and wet with sap. Gurappa has already sawn the logs
into sections about twelve centimetres long. Now he is using an adze to split them into thin
pieces about one centimetre thick. You can smell the new wood. You can imagine
Gurappa’s day in the forest.

Up before dawn, Gurappa takes his curved knife and a little food tied up in a cloth, and starts
off along the path. He walks for an hour until he finds the kind of trees he wants . Only
certain parts of those trees are useful for his work. He climbs the trees and cuts some creepers
and ties his wood into a bundle. The hard all day. He cuts some creepers and ties his wood
into a bundle. The sum begins to go down behind the hills as gurappa returns with his load.