Quiet Dies a Craft: Traditional Bengal Boat Making Documentary 2024
The HinduPublished : Dec 17, 2024 15:49 IST - 1 MIN READ In West Bengal’s Shyampur, 74-year-old master craftsman Panchanan Mandal represents a rare expertise—the art of building “chhot” boats, high-speed wooden vessels that dominated Bengal’s waterways for centuries. Chhot boats are traditional wooden vessels that were once the pride of Bengal’s rivers, especially around the Rupnarayan and Hooghly regions. For generations, skilled craftsmen like Panchanan Mandal constructed these boats using various types of wood, following time-honoured techniques and rituals that included praying to the wood before cutting it. The last traditional chhot boat was built about 30 years ago, until recently when Mandal and his sons constructed one final vessel as part of a heritage documentation project.
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Chhot boats: A Bengali tradition runs aground
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