“What I’m doing is pure art. Nobody except the people from our community – Mahendra Sangam – can work on this. I learnt it from my parents and grandparents, it’s an ancestral skill that the whole family knows. Back in my childhood, my parents didn’t guess that the world would evolve so much with technology. They taught me how to make different kinds of bamboo items, hoping it’d be a good profession with enough money but things turned out otherwise. I’m sending my children to school, because I want them to work in this technologically-developed world. What I do is just work hard for very little money. Both my wife and I work for 12 hours to earn 700 a day. We don’t even belong here. We shifted from Rajahmundry to make a living here. But what I’ve realised is that whether I’m there or here, I need to work very hard to make ends meet. Nobody is going to stand up for us, except the family and our Sangam.”

#Art #Bamboo #Articrafs #Community #Technology #Skill #Education #Struggle #Hardwork #Family #Profession #Traditional #Support #Hyderabad #HumansofHyderabad

“Art has no definition. When you look at a piece of art, you understand it based on your ideas and perceptions. As an artist, my influences come from everyday things. I don’t go looking for inspirations, because ideas can come from the littlest of things. I often see amateurs putting pressure on themselves to create something great. But that’s not how creativity works. You can’t force it, you wait for it. Meanwhile, you give your current thoughts a shape through art.”

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