Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Entertainment | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

When barbies were made at home

Want to relive your childhood? Take a stroll with R.V. Smith into the world of dolls

If you want to see snow on a summer's day the best place is the Dolls Museum in Delhi for here the seasons are kept captive throughout the year for you to take your pick and admire. The trick is to keep your eyes open for the right exhibit. On a June day it may well be Christmas if you just have a peep at the Scandinavian section. There is snow in abundance and the stars overhead are misty, shining from a winter sky to drive away the summer blues.

It is said that Hakim Luqman who, besides other accomplishments could also create life or bring a dead man to life, had a place reserved where he could play about with the seasons if the mood seized him. The Old Man of the Mountains was another West Asian who dabbled in such things, for he had a garden where lovely girls paraded as houris, the flowers bloomed out of season and the newly recruited hashish-laden youth of his Assaains enjoyed all the "sights and sounds" of paradise while under a trance.

Nearer home we have the story of the garden where grew the `banarasi aam' or the mango tree which was laden with fruit throughout the year, but to get to which one had to encounter a hideous giant. Myth and legend were combined to cater to the desire for the mangoes the year round. This urge finds a deep echo in the Dolls Museum as you walk about from stall to stall and meet all the famous characters of the nursery rhymes. With a little bit of credulity one can really enjoy oneself, almost like Alice in Wonderland.

Din of dolls

Remember the story when at the stroke of midnight all the toys came to life and created a din of their own while the child who owned them slept in the arms of his mother. It is some such feeling that takes possession of you as you watch these life-size dolls and wonder if they also create a din when nobody is around. The teddy bear sitting stiff under a tree, the rosy-cheeked girl standing arm-in-arm with a soldier and the dancers holding hands - what would they not do if they were to come to life?

Many a village boy who comes to the museum falls in love with it and dreams of it when he sleeps in his little hut. And many a little girl too. But why pick on villagers alone? There is a Mongol boy who visits the museum as often as possible because for him there is very little difference between fiction and reality. The last time he went there, he was all set to sit amidst the dolls set in a semi-circle.

And what about the grown-ups for whom dolls have disappeared in the long, long ago realm of childhood? They too get their thrills when they see this miniature cosmopolitan world, which stretches beyond the imagination and echoes of its own code of "recollections from early childhood".

Songs of innocence

If you want to hear the songs of innocence again, do step in here on an afternoon, for this place is certainly worth a visit, for young and old alike. But not for long because part of the Dolls Museum is proposed to be moved out from its old home in Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg to R.K. Puram. That's not so centrally located and one wonders if many people will visit it. But those who do will not be disappointed, as it will give them a chance to relive their childhood. For don't we all have child hidden in us no matter how old we may be! Remember Manav, the little boy who Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (Sarojini Naidu's brother) claimed always live in him, even when the poet had become an octogenarian. That is generally true of everyone. Isn't it?

In these days of Barbie dolls, (notwithstanding the tragic Gudiya of Meerut) people have forgotten the good old gudiya-gudda made of cloth and stuffed with cotton, with their faces either painted or embroidered. The gudiya's hair was made of black thread and it took just an afternoon's labour on the part of elder sisters, mothers or grandmothers to complete the dolls for the wedding, to be held the next day by the mohalla kids. Small chappatis were cooked for the occasion and sherbet served as tea was not so popular in pre-partition days. But memories of Tahira's gudiya and Zahida's gudda are revived when one visits the Dolls Museum and when fights took place between siblings, the gudiya-gudda were the first to face their frenzy. However, after tempers cooled down, the two were given a decent burial on the mound near Brahmin Gali. Now the mound too has disappeared, taking numerous dolls' limbs with it.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail