Living Art

Jagannath Pal is a potter by profession. With very skilled hands, he makes used things, decorative items and beautifying products with clay. He learned this craft from his ancestors. He gave it various artistic works in the body of soft clay with his own talent and thinking. Through this work of clay, the scene of Bengal unfolds over a thousand years. Fifty more houses of potters like Jagannath Pal live in the Lakshikol Pal area. There lives sixty-five-year-old Kanchan Rani Pal. Before marriage, Kanchan used to work by the soil with his father. She has been doing the same in her husband's family for forty-five years of marriage. Keeping the tradition of Bengal, Kanchan is doing clay work to uphold the original occupation of the ancestors. After marriage, she could not earn any wealth by working with the soil for more than forty-five years. Because potters are underestimated in different ways by this country, society and people. But they are also artists. A thousand years of history has been lost in such underestimation of potters. On the other hand, this tradition is being lost in the grip of corporate business. The plastic products of the corporate world are consuming the life of the soil. This harmful product is tearing people from the earth. Plastic products are harmful to the environment as well as have an impact on biodiversity. Due to plastic, the Pal community is losing work day by day and becoming unemployed. Due to which, their life is becoming unbearable day by day. If this continues, future generations of potters will turn away from this art. And, people are severing their relationship with the soil as they turn too much to plastic. People are getting sick day by day due to excessive use of plastic but using earthenware has no harmful effect. So, there is no alternative to using earthenware to protect healthy life and environment.