Lighting up his passion

Hands On

As Bangalore gets ready for the ‘Festival of Lights’, ‘diyas’ line the pavements and street corners, and have found home in every nook and cranny of the City. 

    Very soon, these tiny clay lamps will illuminate households, burning ceaselessly atop walls and beside doors. For Kamal Narayanaswamy, this is an exciting time of the year because he gets to showcase his passion to everyone. What started as a hobby has now turned into a small-scale business. “As soon as I come back from work, I don’t waste any time and even when I’m talking to family, I’m working on the ‘diyas’ and decorations.”

 For the past year, he has been selling ‘diyas’, jewellery, wall hangings and other decorations appropriate to a particular festival. This Deepavali, he has painted several ‘diyas’ and even has plans of introducing a gift ‘thali’. “The ‘thali’ will include a decorated plate, small Lakshmi and Ganesha idols, ‘kumkum’ and rice boxes, ‘diyas’, an ‘agarbhatti’ stand and sweets. I got this idea recently and I just finished working on it.”

How did this hobby begin? “I have always been interested in doing such things, ever since I was a child. Initially I would do it for my family and friends, but then, because I was encouraged, I decided to sell my work as well. I still haven’t counted whether I have made a profit or not; for me, it’s more than just about money. This is my passion and it makes me happy,” he says.  

Kamal doesn’t believe in wasting anything. “I like to make art work out of anything I see. I get ideas from everything around me, whether it’s a photo frame from cashew shells or a Ganesha painted on a leaf. I have even taken waste tissue and made a flower from it,” he says. What inspires him to paint his ‘diyas’? “I get inspired by my surroundings. I once saw a sari on TV that had 60,000 colours in it so I made a set of ‘diyas’ that had 160 colours. I used all the colours I had,” he adds.

 He doesn’t just paint the ‘diyas’ but he collects them too. According to him, he currently has almost 500 ‘diyas’ in his house that he plans to keep. “When I buy the ‘diyas’, I always get one for the customer and one for myself. I know that I might never be able to get one like that again. I recently got one where two hands are doing ‘namaste’. I also have other designs like a peacock, elephant, lotus and more,” he says. 

He adds, “I will light some of them and keep the rest for the other festivals. We have festivals almost every month so they will come in handy.”