She kept up a lively, innocent banter with both the young and old gathered around her to witness her weaving magic into the little balls of mud in her hands. Little hollow pumpkins, ornate pots, "Delhi morok" – she made one after another before her awestruck audience.

While she talked, her deft fingers went on with their work — patting a lumpy spot into place lovingly, giving shape to the mud, transforming it from its unrecognizable form – like a mother tenderly and patiently guiding her child to adulthood.

For 62 years old, Sanabam Dharmomala, shaping mud into pots, vases and piggy banks is almost child’s play – after all she has been doing that for most of her lives, as also many other women in Andro village of Imphal East district. But unlike the other women, Dharmomala’s story has a twist.

“It is only the married women of Andro who are allowed to make pots. As per traditional rules unmarried virgins cannot make pots. When I was a young girl, I stole some mud and stealthily started making pots on my own. But it was only after marriage that I could make the pots openly,” she said.

Dharmomala was born at Andro bazaar as the youngest among four children born to late Yumkhaibam Achou and late Boleshori. “My father was a renowned pandit, an astrologer who sometimes provided service at the royal palace during the reign of Maharaj Kulachandra,” she informed.

But it was from her mother, a housewife, that she first learned how to make pots, though the training was less practical work and more learning-by-seeing. “Mother like all married women in Andro was a potter and housewife,” she adds.

As the youngest child, Dharmomala was brought up with great love. “When I was a child, no one in the area wore leather sandals, they used the wooden khurum instead. I was the first to wear leather sandals. And also the first among my friends to wear golden danglers on my ears,” she said with a proud smile.

Her childhood was a celebration of innocence and simplicity, unbroken by outside influences. “Education was far from my mind or that of my friends. Who would wade through the mud and slush, such bad roads we had …,’ she adds.

Dharmomala was married to Sanabam Lalita when she turned 18 years. It was a simple housewife’s life after that, and like all married women in Andro she also started making pots in the traditional manner. However when her husband lost his job as a junior high school chowkidar, she realized she had to do something more to fend for herself and her children.

“I was around 35 years when I started making pots full-time. I would spend the whole day and most of the nights making one pot after another. After all it was the only way I could earn enough to feed my family,” she narrates. She has seven children – two sons and five daughters – and nine grandchildren.

Dharmomala is presently attached to the Andro Gramshang, the traditional museum where she showcases the traditional Andro pottery which doesn’t use a pottery wheel. To make the pots the Andro women use only their hands, a flat oblong stone and a small wooden flat bat, called teitap chei, to beat the lumpy mud into place.

“The whole year’s supply of mud is usually taken in the fairen month from a special loupham after due religious rituals and worship to propitiate the gods,” she said, adding, “They say the first pots were made in the time of the gods and the shape were taken from the fruits of the mera khundong lei.

Andro Pottery in display at 2nd Eco-Crafts Bazaar

• Pudon Makhong,
• Walom,
• Ngangkha,
• Yukhum,
• Wangkham,
• Kambi,
• Kambi Makhong Panba,
• Eshaiphu, etc,