Rags to riches...

Mona

Creative and colourful, the Rag Doll Museum is an instant a hit with visitors of our city’s pride Rock Garden for it takes one on a rural odyssey!  Beautifully landscaped, the entrance of this mud hut greets one with colourful kites. A grandmother sitting with a child on her lap sets the mood of the journey inside...Obviously, it a marvel made out of waste, rightfully labelled Rag Doll Museum, has scenes depicting a wedding, gathering at chaupal, kitchen scene, village women enjoying swings, milking buffaloes, making uplas (dungcakes), offering prayers replete with farm scene, a glass bangle shop and a weaver’s crafts! Don’t be daunted by the heat, the mud walls and all make you feel comfortable. It’s only later that you realise there are air-conditioners working overtime.

Meeting point

Village chaupal here is refreshingly gender neutral. As the old and elderly sit smoking the hookah, women of family are around too. If women’s naths are hard to miss, so is colourful safa (headgear) that men folk adorn. If the elderly are shown happily sitting; the young girls too are having fun singing and swinging!

Dad’s the way!

"Dad started making these rag dolls in the 70s. He would collect waste cloth from tailors and once he had the heap he started making dolls, small ones at first, bigger later that led to life size ones too. These dolls made it to many exhibitions here and also abroad but once my father became weak these were left neglected. It pained me immensely so I met the Home Secretary and shared my view, he gave a go ahead and we began collecting waste material from stitching shops, gave these dolls new clothes, landscaped the place and put them on display!"

No selfie zone

Well crafted, the well scene has women fetching water in colourful, ornate pitchers. This is one place where the caretakers would stop people from posing for the camera! Odhanis in place, as is their jewellery, these ‘rag’ women spell strength and togetherness in their day to day chores.

Glass image

Colourful glass bangles evoke the memories of the era gone by when womenfolk shopping for tinkling glass bangles in myriad of colours was a fun sight. Each of the rag doll offers beauty–rich colours making the choli, lenhga and duppattas, the borders on sleeves giving the feel of armful of bangles, necklaces–chokars, layered in gold and silver, bindi twinkling.

—Anuj Saini,  Nek Chand’s son