Ode to the Bangle Sellers (A Vanishing Tribe)

                                        “ Bangle sellers are we who bear
                                           Our shining loads to the temple fair...
                                           Who will buy these delicate, bright
                                           Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
                                           Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
                                           For happy daughters and happy wives.”

                                                                                      Sarojini Naidu

As a child this poem came alive before my eyes whenever I saw the Bangle Seller, who used to peddle his colourful ware on the streets of our neighborhood. He carried them on a  rectangular wooden frame, arranged according to colour. The dazzling reds, greens, and all the other vibrant colours used to sparkle under the noon sunlight. My mother and her friends having finished their cooking would sit down to bargain for those lovely bangles which always adorned their wrists – a symbol of their married status. These bangle sellers used to have the gift of gab and used to convince them to buy the bangles with exotic names like Pakeezah, Anarkali and others. The Bangle Sellers were not just salesmen of a merchandise – they participated in the rites of passage like menarche, wedding and the numerous festivals and also acted sometimes as matchmakers.  The bangles they sold were not very expensive and needed to be replaced frequently because these women did all the housework themselves, so accidents were bound to happen and bangles had to be replaced.

Glass bangles brought not only beauty but also music to the house – the tinkle changed as the women went about their daily task sweeping, grinding, dressing up – each activity producing a different type of music and reassuring the children and others of the security that these hands provided. They encouraged creativity, with children using the broken bangle pieces to create indigenous games; to make chains to decorate the homes and make wall hangings – the scope was infinite.

The advent of the Plastic age dealt a death knell to these lovely glass bangles and slowly the bangle seller could not make his regular trips since replacements were not so frequent.  Slowly the bangle seller vanished from the urban streets and the bangles were dressed up in tissue paper and imprisoned in small cardboard boxes on the shelves of the so called “Ladies Shops” at atrocious rates. The dazzle and sparkle of the bangles have been dimmed since they are no longer on display in the open natural light, glinting at women with wicked glee and seducing them with their lustrous charm.

 There is no doubt that a wide variety of bangles is now available in the market and crafted beautifully from a vast variety of materials but they cannot hold a candle to the glass bangles  described by the Nightingale of India Sarojini Naidu 

   “Some ….Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
      Some .. flushed like the buds that dream on the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
         Some .. aglow with the bloom that cleaves to the limpid glory of new born leaves
             Some …like fields of sunlit corn,
                  Some.. like the flame of .. marriage fire,
                      Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire”
 

and it is not just wishful thinking that makes me say so...  My salutations to the few Bangle Sellers, who still adorn with their twinkling ware the shandies and fairs of the rural-scape of India.