by MARK MAGNIER
Those who make combs and ornaments out of animal bone and horn run the risk of tuberculosis from the dust or losing a finger to dangerous equipment. And many of the workers are children.
Workers use tools to shape animal horns into spoons and forks in Sambhal,… PHOTO/Mark Magnier
In a small, dark room in this city of narrow alleys and workshops the size of shoeboxes, five men in their 70s fashion combs out of water buffalo horn with hand saws for $2 a day.
“It’s very hard work,” said Abdul Bashir, 70. “But I’ve got to eat.”
Members of this predominantly Muslim community of 50,000 have hacked, chipped, cut, molded and polished animal bones and horns into baubles or beads for generations.
But the ornaments worn on the supple wrists and suntanned necks of far-off fashionistas carry a high price for these craftsmen, who must live with airborne clouds of bone dust that sticks to their eyes, hair and lungs.
“If you’re over 50 around here, you almost certainly have tuberculosis,” said Mohammad Arshad, 32, the owner of a bone-carving workshop whose parents died of the debilitating lung disease.
Although TB takes years to show up, other dangers in Sambhal, India’s unofficial bone-crafting center, appear in seconds. In one of the hundreds of small workshops, most spewing enough white dust to mimic a snowstorm, worker Mohammad Behzad sits on his haunches for 10 hours a day shaping horn pieces at an open power saw.
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(Thanks to Asghar Vasanwala)