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Weaving bamboo dreams

photos: Thulasi Kakkat

Bamboo passion Yahiya at work in his shop. Below, his road project, complete with street lights and a war ship.

To you and me, what good is a tough bamboo piece? Maybe to support a beam just constructed. But to P.K Yahiya, it can be used to weave dreams. A Taj Mahal is taking shape at his small shop, Gulshan Footwear, behind Changampuzha Park, at Edappally. When the footfalls take a break, in the afternoon, mainly, Yahiya gets busy with his knive, strips chipped off from the bamboo and glue. Imagination runs riot and his hands create tiny pieces that will make a teeny-weeny peephole or a dome.

At his house in Muppathadam, near Kochi, a miniature warship is all ready, with a plane, radar that can be moved around the post, war vehicle wheels that can turn and anchors that have flexible chains like real ones: All made from bamboo. This is among five models that Yahiya has crafted. The Taj Mahal is his sixth one.

Road project

“I travel by bike to my shop in Edappally and the long traffic jams inspired this,” he says, showing a road project he made. The flyovers and pedestrian crossings, the tiny jeeps, cars, oil tankers, double decker buses and tipper lorries all have a free run, in his dream road project. There is a median and the street lights actually work, tiny Led lights that can be switched on. (Yahiya once worked as an electrician)

“It can be implemented anywhere,” he says confidently. The school dropout has had a chequered life so far. He did odd jobs, a mason for some time, an electrician, plumber, a painter, and then had a 14 year stint in UAE, in a petrol pump. I got shot once, on my arm, by robbers but I did not surrender the money at the bunk, says Yahiya with pride. Early this century, he came back to mind his brother's footwear shop.

How the hobby began

“It was actually my wife, Shyla who started me on this hobby. Once, when we went to an exhibition, she wanted to buy a bamboo vase. When I asked for the price, I thought it was not worth that much. I told her I would make her one. Since it was my first work, it does not have the finish I wanted,” he says pointing to a big maroon bamboo vase. The second one, a hotel with a pool atop a winding roadway, has deck chairs et al. “I had made a few people also with bamboo, but my father told me I should not make people, for they are God's creations, unlike other man made things. In another work, a helicopter rests on a helipad, atop a winding road, going up.

Yateem and Yaseen, his children dare not tamper with their father's creations, of which they are proud. But Yahiya seeks no help from his family, neither does he sketch his project first. “It's all in my mind and I have no peace till I finish it. The road project took almost a year. He has not sold any work so far though Yahiya is hoping to exhibit them somewhere. “If I get a really good amount. I just might…” and he breaks off, with a laugh, arranging them back in their places in his drawing room, as his wife comments, “He never sits idle even for a second. See, he has painted our house too, though it's in instalments!”

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