The potter stuffed clay into the frame of the Durga image he had fashioned from straw wound around a bamboo pole, to flesh it out. Inserting bits of clay into the figure, shaping them delicately, taking off whatever excess material there was, he fashioned elegant hands, breasts and buttocks. As he worked on the figure in the thatched shed on the bank of the river, the village children gathered around to watch silently, full of respect and admiration. Each time the figure took shape in his hands, the potter would see the respect his audience felt gradually transform into a feeling of devotion for the goddess. He did not know whether this was a loss or a gain, but he never failed to witness the change.
The boatmen rowing across the river that was like a sea, with the farther bank invisible, sang as they rowed. The breeze that wafted in from the river caressed the potter and the image. Whenever he sat back for a while to rest and to allow the clay to dry, he heard and felt these things.
When he had finished shaping the body and head of the image, he started to shape the fingers of Durga’s many hands which would hold her weapons.
‘Kumhar-bhaiya, kumhar-bhaiya,’ the children gathered around him called out. ‘There are only two folds in these fingers. They are all thumbs!’
‘Yes, children,’ said the potter, with the detachment of the artist who has almost finished his work. ‘I do not know how to make fingers. I am attaching the fingers I found floating in the river. After all, it is Ganga-ma who gives me the clay and water I need to make the thakur.’
‘Kumhar-bhaiya, how do these fingers come floating through the water?’
‘I do not know, children. Someone must be chopping them off and offering them to Ganga-ma—the thumbs of Ekalavyas who are being forced to give up their own knowledge of a trade.’
‘If all the fingers are thumbs, how will the thakur wield her weapons and do battle?’
‘The thakur is only a lifeless image, children,’ said the potter, going down into the water to look for the remaining fingers he needed. ‘If they are thumbs, let them be. After all, are they not the only things in this straw-and-clay image that represent human beings?’