Filigree dreams...

I’m no stranger to metal or mettle. The former since my dad ran a fabrication workshop and the latter as his art spoke for itself. Dad was an artist at creating the most intricate designs. Going to the workshop was always great fun. I loved the sounds, sights and smells, the electric flame of welding, that began as gold, turned blue and violet and then white and the sizzling crackle as the metal smote in rebellion as it connected (while it should rather rejoice at the mating) with fire.

As is common with Protestant men from Mangalore, mechanical, structural, electrical works are almost second nature to them and they owe this to the influence of the Basel Mission via Hebich Technical Training Institute run by KACES in Balmatta. Which meant that I had an entire family that dabbled in the similar line of business and technical terms of welding, lathing, milling and the like were thrown around carelessly like flecks of lint you brush off hand.

Women of the community weren’t encouraged to pursue this vocation, they either ended up as teachers or nurses, once again owing to the Basel Mission’s Mission hospital and Schools. No no! this isn’t a lament about lost opportunities, my track record in school wouldn’t afford me dreams of any sort, even ‘fabricated’ ones.

As fate would have it, I began as an English lecturer (true to form) and now work with a manufacturing unit and our foundry and machine shop adopts best in class technology. I walk into the shopfloor and am assailed with memories of daddy’s ‘Indian Industries’, feels somehow more like home than in the sterilized office space.

As sometimes reminiscence does, while transported from a white washed sterile hue into one of vibrancy that colors and admonishes your every sense, you stagger at the impact and flounder trying to find your foothold lest you fall flat on your roman nose (mine is a pale imitation) or on your back (mine is the real Mc Coy!) and steady yourself with whatever is handy and I found strength in filigree. 

Filigree the definition - then delicate work of fine wire, tiny beads or twisted threads formed into delicate tracery soldered and artistically arranged. Filigree the allusion.

Ah! This peregrination… from fabrication to filigree!