Field Visits

Ragi Kana is a weekly rural market, located at Kalena Agrahara, Gottigere which promotes rural based farmers, weavers and artisans with traditional arts, cultures and many more. It happens on every Sunday from 10 in the morning till 12 noon. Ragi Kana is basically trying to bridge the gap between rural products and urban consumers. They also organize talks about sustainability, rural development, workshops, cultural programs etc. When I visited Ragi Kana, I personally had an experience of interviewing a lady called Smita, who was selling pottery, baskets, homemade pickles and handlooms. The pottery she was selling was brought from Sullia, which was made by a community called Kumbhara. It is a generational craftsmanship, where there were forty families earlier, which now got reduced to four families. It is completely made through a manual process, like it is heated with a stick to make it hard and they use river pebbles to make it more shiny. Then I got curious to know how she got to this idea of selling pottery, to which she answered that, earlier she used to buy pottery from urban areas and after cooking a particular dish, the stinky smell of oil retained even after washing and she felt disgusted. Thus she came to know about the pottery community at Sullia and gave it a try, and thus ended up in selling pottery. The baskets which she was selling were made by a tribal community called Koraga. All the wines used to make this basket were from the forest and it is called Illuballi which means house wines. There are different types of wild wines, where it itself stores water inside which is drinkable. Handloom was the other thing which she had, where she brought it from the hands of the weavers and was designed by herself and some other women from the city spaces. Through this she provides an opportunity of a job for the urban housewives, where they are open to their creativity, and will get paid per piece. Smita is also planning for a community setting soon, where all these women can come together at one place and work, where the main aim is to give them a social exposure.