Moons in metalworks.
Puppets in makeshift cinemas.
Woven carpets slipped on wooden floors.
The grandeur of calligraphy.
In our modern world, we find our centuries-old traditional craftsmanship transforming into a testament of the past.
Where the craftsman sits on the street, the metal laden at his feet, the world loses itself in the digital universe. Once, decades ago, his shop bristled with gatherings and purchasers, who embraced the metalworks; now he has no mentee. There were the puppets that danced in the amaranthine bliss of colours flowing through the curtains, and crowds that were awed with fascination. Those streets now howl in emptiness, with those puppets sitting discarded in the farthest corner. The puppet’s strings lay on the ground in an empty box up on a shelf. The hammer stays there idle, in the abandoned, dulled metalwork craft shop.
The richness and embodiment of these cultural crafts, honed by skilled craftsmen, were more than just a job. Descendants upon descendants, working on creating cultural masterpieces, teaching their children and youth deeply adoptive cultural practices, art, and craftsmanship. Ringing out papers and marvelling at paints and ink on sheets to create the moving calligraphy, aimed at a more culturally enigmatic spiritual exploration. Their central purpose was to offer a semblance of ritualistic identity and communal pride in producing art in a more culturally responsive form. To engrave not just a message of spirituality, but to etch into the metals and clothes a message, one of an inherently rich sense of belonging: To be an elegy of Pakistani heritage.
In our modern day, we find ourselves suspended in the digital world and its industrial tides. Slowly shifting from a sense of fulfilment to efficiency in the production of mass-produced crafts, all dependent on the flow of algorithmic trends that shape the horizons of the digital world. Our grand, flamboyant, and dignified crafts, once our identity and heritage, now hide behind screens. Discarded away in online storage files in mere forms of trendy images and idolization of art, with no real sense of ownership over heritage. Most of it was transformed into a catch game for the industrialization of their purpose. The truest artisanal dignity shifted into a mere consolation for decor and art, failing to see behind the ink that sits on it, the hands that carved it into life, or the brushes that swayed over it. The lamenting talent, all but, has been smoked away because our world has lost the importance of understanding the purposefulness of cultural heritage.
Years ago, in the Pakistani craftsmanship industry, one of the most remarkable relationships that flourished in building the heritability in the crafts was a deeply bonded relationship of a ustaad, the mentor craftsman, and his shaagird, the student. The expert would pick up the hammer and mold the metal into another piece; his shaagird would learn from him. With the ustaad offering mentorship, and the shaagirds eager to learn, they formed the artworks into much more than just something one’s eye would appreciate; it would be what the heart could feel. However, in our modern world, today, our youths have fewer means of learning and social stigmas, which are paired with low income that prevents a rooting interest in such craftsmanship. The masters sit in their empty shops, longing for their shaagirds as they experience a progressive generational loss of heartfelt art and companionship.
Despite this tidal shift in our industry, we still find ourselves immersed in the feel of those lost olden times. Wondering if this loss of artisanship is worth the progression of our diluted industrial ascension? The question sits, when we walk by empty shops, solemn craftsmen with unpurchased crafts hanging, when we see the weavers making carpets that sit forever rolled up in the corner of the shops, when we witness the tangas (horse carts), barren and discarded on roads. The answer slips with the realization that the very hands that built our visual and cultural heritage are regressing. And with this characteristically inherent fire for art, some still work for the preservation of our delicately serene cultural crafts.
Now, with the slow fade of our cultural crafts, preservation efforts are ongoing—with Lok Melas and heritage festivals, the culture revives again, slowly but surely. People join in on working on keeping the traditional art alive, with students offering insights to tourists, and media taking notice of the dying crafts, the world of Pakistani Craftsmanship The efforts of the metalworkers, the puppeteers, the calligraphers, the weavers, the traditional potters, and the glass workers have not completely dissolved in the spreading flood of industrialization. It leaves, inevitably, its dying ember in the roaring fire. The ustaads sit their crafts decoratively on shelves, still awaiting their shaagirds.
– Hajra Ahmed