Meet the artists who travel from Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai every year to make Ravan effigies

Moulding the face is a crucial step that takes artists approximately three days to complete. Pics/Shadab Khan

Every September, roughly 25 days before the spectacular celebrations of Dussehra, a team of artists from the north of India move lock, stock, and barrel to Mumbai. These are Muslim karigars who barely pick up a brush for most of the year, but have been trusted for generations to build Mumbai's Ravans at a workshop in Sion. Back home, in Noida and Dadri (Uttar Pradesh), these artisans usually have other jobs or run small businesses for much of the year, but generations of expertise that goes into making these effigies that light up Mumbai during our celebration of the triumph of good over evil.

Hafizuddin Ahmad's team is working to finish eight effigies for this year's Dussehra

Leading the group is Hafizuddin Ahmad, a man who has been making effigies for over four decades and now directs the younger crop of artists under him. One of them is his son, Shehzad Ahmad. "We start helping out as soon as we are old enough to work," says Shehzad, "I remember back in 2008, when I had just started, we had made two effigies. Now we are up to eight or nine."

Shehzad Ahmad and Hafizuddin Ahmad

They work simultaneously on every effigy, carefully building each part, from the heads to the legs. When finished, the group sets up the effigies for various mandals in Sion Koliwada, Girgaon Chowpatty, Azad Maidan, Malad, Chembur, and more.

Muslim artists come from Noida and Dadri, UP to make effigies for Ramleelas across Mumbai

They are proud of their work. When we ask if people trouble them for doing work for a festival that is traditionally not considered theirs, pat comes Shehzad's reply: "People can say whatever they want. Doesn't matter. What we make is art and there's nothing wrong in it. We do 16-18 hours of hard and honest work every day, for a month, so that the effigies can be made."

Artists work on faces and bodies (left) simultaneously, working 16-18 hours a day for a month

Seasonal work, though, has its own ups and downs. The group shrinks and swells depending on external factors, which sometimes means that there aren't enough people and, therefore, a lot more work for less income. But the group does not dither. In supplying the most recognisable element of Dussehra, they keep presenting to us the rich, nuanced, and often overlooked connections different communities share in India.

Hafizuddin Ahmad's team consists of 15 artists, all of whom do different jobs for the rest of the year