KOLLAM: The sparkling stars that add glitter to the festivities of Christmas indeed have a humble birth like that of Jesus. Many of the stars that find pride of place atop houses and churches as a harbinger to Christmas are the handiwork of the women in the fishing hamlets of Kollam. There are around half-a-dozen enterprises engaged in the star business in the Thoppe-Mundakkal area and they export stars and other decorative items to various parts of the country and even abroad. These large-scale manufactures assigns the work to homemakers of the fisher folk in the coastal belt stretching from Tangasseri to Thanni, near Eravipuram. The vehicles of these enterprises go from door to door and provide raw materials, including papers and glue, and later collect the finished products from them. The work for a season begins as early as April-May, while some enterprises, with a wide export market, begin the work from January. Not all women among them are experts in crafting designer stars, the select few has work throughout the year. Though the remuneration these women get is meagre, they seem to be a happy lot and through this work they make sure that they earn enough money to spend on new clothes and festivities during Christmas. “The remuneration is given according to the number of stars we make and it will be given during Christmas. So the work that we do all around the year becomes a good saving for the Christmas,” Sindhu Titus of Mundakkal said. The men in the area mostly work in fishing boats and after completing the household chores, the women of the neighbourhood gathers at the verandah of a house and gets engaged in the work. “We had been engaged during daytime in mending and repairing traditional fishing nets before, but with the traditional fishing nets fast disappearing there was nothing else for us to do. It was then that we found star making an ideal job that we can do sitting in our house,” says Sophia, Ida and Sheena of Port Kollam. Manager of Rajeshwari Fine Arts, Sasidharan Nair, told ‘Express’ that they have assigned the work to more than 150 families in the region and there would be more than 300 households doing the work in the region. Each household makes around 100 stars a day and the workload will peak during the months of November and December, when the demand in the domestic markets increases, he said.
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