Just as greeting card culture perished, our art form is also slowly dying, says bamboo artist

THE six-day Bamboo Fest, which concluded at Marine Drive on Thursday, was a crowd-puller from Day 1.

- SHYAM P V @Kochi

Among those who put up various bamboo and other items on display at the fest was a man sitting inside a 3x3-ft-stall, poised and focused.

He is B Radhakrishnan, a 58-year-old with a story, about Perinad in Kollam, a village once home to hundreds of handicrafts until two decades ago.

"We had so many hay art craftsmen in our village that we were able to ship a single order of eight lakh hay greeting cards to Europe around 25 years ago. Even today, we get a handful of orders, but the craftsmen's count has come down from tens of hundreds to mere hundreds. Of them, just a few dozen are seasoned ones. Just as the greeting card culture perished, our art form is also slowly dying," said Radhakrishnan, a two-time winner of the National Handicrafts Award and numerous other accolades, including the State Handicrafts Award.