Geetanjali Krishna: The colours of hope

It was a usual morning at Karm Marg, home to children and young adults from the streets. Veena, the president, was bawling out Anish Bhatt, an alumnus who continued to work there as an adult. Anish stood, head bowed, with a piece of newspaper in his agitated hands. By his own admission, not only was he the one who received the maximum scoldings, he also deserved them most of the time. “I listened, folding and rolling the paper in my hands, while Veena didi lectured on and on, and suddenly, the paper in my hands took an interesting shape…,” he recounts. He’d managed to roll the old newspaper into a long pipe, and twist it over and over again to create a round coaster. He painted it with colour mixed with acrylic glue, and it hardened. “The next day, after Veena didi’s temper had cooled, I showed her what I’d made. She liked it so much that she ordered 50 pieces from me on the spot,” says Aneesh. And thus began Koofsutra, this young man’s own label for original handicraft products fashioned out of waste newspaper.

 

His product range — baskets, coasters, clocks, mats and photo frames to name some — is so funky that people have to really look carefully to figure that it is all made of a newspaper rolled into pipes of varying thicknesses. “We turn some of the slimmer pipes into roundels to create baskets, coasters, mats and more. And, we glue the pipes along their lengths to create photo and mirror frames,” he explains. Once the basic shape has been achieved, it is painted over and lacquered. In the last year or so, Koofsutra has exhibited its range with a fair degree of success. These products also retail in some niche stores like People Tree in Delhi. “Now that our sales are going up, our group has also expanded to include some people from Karm Marg, and with ladies from a village near our campus in Faridabad,” says Anish enthusiastically.

Watching him explain his products to browsers at Dastkar’s Basant Bazaar, I was struck by his confidence and marketing abilities. “Today,” says he, “if I can look at life in the eyes, if I can hold my head high amongst people much more educated than me, it’s because of the guidance I received from Dev bhaiya and Veena didi of Karm Marg!” Anish recollects that when he told them he didn’t want to study further, they encouraged him to find a means to earn a dignified living instead. “They inspired me to make something of my life,” says he, “and I tell everyone all the time that whatever I am today is because of them!”

Listen to his life story, and you’d realise what a long way Anish has come. He came to Delhi with his mother from Nepal when he was he was hardly 12. Although his mother worked as a domestic help, they never had a proper home. Eventually, he joined Karm Marg and for the next eight years, the home and its people became his family. After he turned 18, the age when Karm Marg encourages its members to seek out their fortunes in the outside world, Anish decided to stay put and work on campus.

It’s no wonder, then, that Karm Marg’s philosophy of recycling has found its way into Anish’s creative consciousness. “At Karm Marg, jugaad (using waste innovatively to create objects of beauty and functionality) was a way of life,” says he. When I left him, Anish was animatedly planning on other newspaper-based products, and wondering whether he should try using organic Holi colours on them…

And think, most of us usually just throw out old newspapers without a backward glance!!