Forty-two year old Gurupada Mana belongs to a traditional mat weaving family from Sabang block in Pashchim Medinipur. Born into a family of weavers, his in-depth training began only after he lost his parents, when he was in Class IX. The orphaned children, including his five sisters struggled to pull the family through, but eventually, Gurupada was compelled to drop out of school after his Madhyamik (Class X) exams. His third sister (Shejo Didi) now became his teacher and guru. Gurupada was fifteen at the time.
The family used to harvest madur reeds on their own plot of land at the time and Gurupada began with learning to weave thick madur reeds into mats. But withing two years he had moved on to weaving the renowned masland mats, unique to his region, where the reeds are split into very fine strips before they are woven. The finer the strips, the more superior the mat.
Other than his sister, his first guru, Sabang master weavers who helped finetune Gurupada`s intrinsic skills were national awardees Pushparani Jana, Nishikanto Das and Alok Jana. He later honed his skills under the tutelage of Gouribala Das, yet another national awardee, at a training program in 2013 and continued to be guided by her for several years. His intrinsic talent and superior skills were instantly recognised and demand for his masland mats began to grow.
Though the Sabang region earlier boasted of just a few masland weaving villages like Sarta, Jhikuria, Talda and Kholaberya initially, Gurupada is grateful that with help of the WB Khadi & Village Industries Board and social enterprises, many more villagers (primarily women) have been trained. With the continued support of these institutions, via invitations to fairs across the country, design development, product diversification and marketing knowhow programmes, there has been a boost in sales as well.
Gurupada too has benefited from the government programmes and has participated in fairs across the country, focussing only on masland. Meanwhile, with his new found fame, Gurupada realised that he could not weave enough by himself to keep up with the demand and would need help from other weavers in order to cope. Deliberately staying away from established masland mat weavers, he sought instead, to train those mat weavers who were previously not associated with masland weaving. This, he felt was the only way to keep the rich tradition alive.
Most of his trainees are women and of the hundreds he has trained, twenty women work under him on a daily basis. Beginning with the less intricate weaving patterns, it is Gurupada`s desire to eventually get them to develop sufficient skills to weave the finest of masland mats, which he and other master masland mat weavers excel in. His wife too assists him, since it takes two weavers to weave a masland mat. Meanwhile, Gurupada has trained his apprentices so well, that their skills easily match those of existing weavers who have been weaving masland for much, much longer.
In recognition of his teaching skills, and the sincerity and readiness with which he imparts knowledge, the Khadi Board has sent him to teach at various programmes. Gurupada has won a district award so far. His hope for the future is not just to win more awards, but to help expand the number of artisans working on the unique masland mat. A scenario that he dreams of is where there is a masland artist in every village corner in Sabang and whose exceptional skills are in demand across the world.