Every July, in Orissa, outside a sleepy little town called Paradeep, everybody gets ready for the annual chariot (rath) festival of Lord Jagannath. This town's rath traditions are entirely different from those followed by the more famous rath at Puri, where only Hindus are allowed to participate and pull the chariot.
About third of Paradeep's citizens are Muslims. Yet temple festivals are never a time for people to worry. In Paradeep, Muslims and Hindus have celebrated all festivals together, ever since anybody can remember. Somehow, every year, each community seems to know what its duties are. The temple's chariot had been built by timber donated by both Hindus and Muslims, and carved by both Hindu and Muslim carpenters. For the rath yatra, Muslims clear the road and people of both communities pull the sacred ropes of the chariots.
Well, like the temple, the chariot too is ancient, so often damages do occur; which the town people immediately set about repairing. One year, the problem was a little different….one of the intricately carved front panels, developed a crack right down the middle. This called for more than ordinary carpentry skills. It required an artist to able to carve a replica of the detailed forest scene on the cracked panel. The temple priests thought about their options. Since the general feeling in Paradeep is that Lord Krishna's chariot belongs to everyone, the carpenters of the village were summoned.
Since the annual festival was just a few months away, the temple authorities felt it was best to just seal the crack with some paste and varnish it to hide the crack. Looking for a master carver could be done after the festival. But the town's carpenters weren't happy with this idea. Lord Krishna couldn't ride in a chariot with the front panel cracked (even if the crack was to be camouflaged)!
The carpenters spent a couple of nights discussing the problem. They were honest about their talents and knew that there wasn't a carpenter amongst them, Muslim or Hindu, who could carve that forest scene. The option was to look for an artisan from another town to carve the panel for them. But somehow, nobody wanted an 'outsider' to be part of their precious chariot. How nice it would be if someone from their own town could fix the problem.
Finally they decided to choose the best carpenter from each community to jointly carve the new panel. This would be a trial, and in case the work didn't look satisfactory, for this year's rath festival, they'd follow the priest's idea of sealing the crack. But for next year, they needed to get a new panel.
For the moment everybody in town seemed happy…yes, this had been a topic that was worriedly discussed in all homes, tea-shops and bazaars of Paradeep. All except the teenaged gang of boys who served tea near the temple. These sons of traders and sweet sellers knew one secret…they knew the extraordinary talent of Apu, a poor Christian boy who sometimes served tea with them, for a daily wage. Apu's family were 'new' in Paradeep.
They'd migrated from interior Orissa about 5-6 years ago, looking for work and fleeing villages where locals sometimes taunted them for converting to Christianity. As the family kept moving, Apu gave up his dream of becoming a carpenter. Selling away his precious tools, along with other household goods, when money was needed.
When Apu's father had died, his family were forced to sell their small hut with a patch of land beside it to make ends meet, and Apu had taken up whatever job came his way, including selling tea during the busy festival nights. Very few knew that Apu had the most gifted pair of hands in the village. He could repair a leaking pipe, string a garland of flowers or carve a piece of wood like a magician.
Now, his teenaged friends begged him to show the few carved pieces he'd shyly revealed them, to the temple priest, but Apu refused. Both the Muslim and Hindu carpenters selected already, were good craftsmen. And for the first time in years, Apu's family had felt save. Somehow, in Paradeep, all communities seemed to coexist peacefully. He didn't want to upset anybody by competing with them and inviting their anger upon his family.
So one busy night, when Apu was busy running errands around the temple, the tea gang sneaked into his family's home, stole all his precious samples and ran off to show it to the priest. The old man was delighted, and in turn, summoned the 2 best carpenters and asked them for their opinion. Both swore that the hand that had carved these beautiful samples, HAD to carve the new panel. Somehow, it didn't matter to either the priest or the carpenters, that Apu was a Christian.
And that is why one panel on the chariot looks so much better than the others. The town folk proudly point it out to visitors, as 'Apu's panel'. And since it's Paradeep tradition that all work done for the temple is free, Apu didn't get paid for his beautiful carvings, but Mohanty Babu offered him a job in his big carpentry shop and that's how Apu could afford to send his younger brother back to school.
