Posted by: Administrator
on Sep 11, 2010
You play with what you see, and this is what children see.
For 17 years, the former furniture maker has been selling his diminutive wooden wares along the roadside, carefully arranged in lines, orderly, never honking or cutting each other off, in contrast to the real versions rumbling by a few feet away.
Over those years, the town of Dhanaula became locally famous for the brightly painted toys, and soon shopkeepers started coming from miles around to buy wholesale.
"Chinese toys have cheap electronics that break within a few days," says Gurpreet Singh Bagga, who buys for his shop 50 miles away. "And it's good to have things made in India for Indians. People get jobs."
As business grew, the 32-year-old Singh drew in his family members, employing his brother to cut the wood, his wife to sand and buff, his children to paint, producing an average of five a day. "It's good — now the family can work together," he says.
