06 Feb 2023  |   05:06am IST

Modernisation chips away at Goa’s tottering kumbhar community

Once in much demand, local Goan potters are now being relegated to a corner as times and tastes change rapidly
Modernisation chips away at Goa’s tottering kumbhar community

Giselle Regina Fernandes


SIOLIM Along several highways and at local markets, most Goans have probably passed by stacks of the red clay pots or have even drunk from the famous cockerel-shaped water coolers that their grandparents used during the days of yore. What they likely did not realise is that they were witnessing Goa’s rich history of pottery come to life when they saw, owned, or used those nostalgia-inducing clay items.

One of the oldest professions, pottery uses the state’s distinctive, red, lateritic mud or clay for utilitarian and decorative use. The items range from earthenware like pots and cooking utensils to planters, vases and even sculptures. Local potters, known as ‘kumbhar’, historically hailed from the eponymous Kumbhar Vaddo in North Goa’s Socorro village, and their trade goes back several generations into Goa’s Portuguese era.

Seventy-year-old Merciana 

Sequeira of Vaddem, Socorro, is among the last of the kumbhars in this quaint but fast fading occupation. She comes from a lineage of potters – what with the 

tradition being handed down several generations of her family – and is resigned to the fact that it will most likely end with her.

Despite being worth a few annas back in the day, Sequeira recalls how her family made its living making and selling earthen pots. Work was laborious and time-consuming, she says, and usually began in the peak summer month of May, when the fields are at their driest and the heat, unforgiving.

“Each potter would hire labourers and venture deep into the fields, digging for six days and six nights, through the sand and mud, finally reaching the clay-rich soil.

On days when there weren’t enough labourers, fellow potters would pitch in to ensure that work was equally divided and no one person would have too much on his plate. Modernisation has made things easier now though, with just two truckloads of clayey soil doing the job several bullock cart trips used to before.

The potters would gather enough mud to last an entire year. Once digging was complete, they would replace the mud to ensure they were not leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the fields that could pose a danger to both humans and animals. “Unlike the miners, we give back to the Earth what we take because we have to respect Nature,” Sequeira says.

The next step was to separate the mud to procure the workable clay that the potters sought. This was then sundried and stored in specially designed huts, and would remain there until it was time to 

be shaped and baked into 

different types of objects such as the famed ‘gurgurete’.

Life as a potter has not been easy, Sequeira says. She sculpts 10 hours each day besides cooking and 

tending to her field, but has always been proud of her occupation and the quaint clay products she sells in the market.

Back in the day, food prepared and stored in earthen pots wouldn’t spoil easily, and could last for several days without a problem. The advent of refrigerators virtually did away with the need for these pots, Sequeira rues, while she says that her business is on its last leg because of this. Modern storage solutions and more durable utensils have only made the situation worse.

Incidentally, the chemicals found in uncoated aluminium cookware for instance can react to vinegar, tamarind or any other souring agents, corroding the vessel and leaching unwanted impurities into the food. The silver lining for potters like Sequeira is that heightened awareness of the harmful effects of such products has been prodding more and more people to seek out earthen vessels once again.

Things may look up for Sequeira in the near future, but her children, who have seen her toil all her life for meagre pay, say they have no interest in continuing the family occupation. They have, instead, chosen to put their efforts into other more profitable professions.

The marketplace is not what it used to be either, Merciana laments, with migrant vendors having virtually invaded it, making it more hostile and competitive. She says they swoop in on coveted spots by greasing the palms of the sopo collectors, while the elderly local vendors are pushed to the fringes of the market where traffic movement and footfalls are lesser.

As she sits confined to the dimly lit, lonely corners of the market with no strength left to fight for this dying cause, Sequeira envisages that in a few years from now, there will be no one left to take forward the art of local pottery and that the once ubiquitous kumbhar will merely be relegated to history.

IDhar UDHAR

Idhar Udhar