Uplas, pancake-sized patties made of gobar – cow or ox dung - are the quintessential hand-made object. A dollop of dung comes out the back end of the cow. Scooped up and shaped by hand into a ball and then thrown, splat onto a bed of ashes. The upla is made. Now it must be left on a wall, or on a rock to dry in the sun. In the centre of the patty, a deep and clear handprint is the mark of the action of making and of the maker herself. Nothing other than the human hand shapes this simple but startling act of creativity.
This material affirmation of the centrality of the hand in human making is deeply significant to Burton. He loves the upla, both as a multi-sensorial object - smell, taste, touch, sight, sound are all present here - and as an emblem for the hand-made. Thousands of uplas are stacked into a bithoora, a fuel store, the lower walls held in place with a thick layer of gobar, womanfully inscribed and patterned by an energised performance of slaps, pinches, punches and jabs.
At first sight, people often imagine that bithooras are open, hollow structures. And they do have the appearance of a shelter or house: there is a carefully layered roof and decorated walls; even a kind of doorway. In fact, they are solid. The thought that there must be an interior space speaks to our expectations of protection or shelter. Solid objects tend to disappoint: one can’t get inside. Whereas objects with hollows, cavities, internal spaces delight and enchant, particularly when the interior space is a surprise. Burton has watched people hunting around a bithoora trying to find a way in – only to find a blind opening that allows for the removal of the uplas packed inside.
What have bithooras and uplas got to do with ceramics or clay? Despite their complexity as objects, bithooras are made solely from one material. Solid objects have a massing, a weightiness about them – with no internal space to experience we must try to understand them solely from our external perspective. What is inside? Piles of clay bricks, sometimes raw, stacked up for firing, have the same quality. Each brick is placed in a special way, narrow face pointing out so that they can be easily pushed in and later removed. Human dimensions are here too – a stack of bricks will be no higher than a man can reach. Each individual brick is of a shape and of a weight that fits perfectly to a man’s hand. Like an upla, each brick carries an impression, but here the mark is not the soft contours of the hand but the sharp mechanical angles.
Around Delhi one often comes across stacks of bricks and bithooras in close proximity, standing on a patch of open land or by the roadside. The bricks seemingly waiting for construction to begin, the uplas to be burnt cooking chapatis – which they lend, apparently, a special flavour. Delhi is truly a gendered landscape.
