House of Hobbies - 2 -- Prashant Baitule: Small wonders

Crazy and creative, passionate and positive, influential and introverted, happy and hopeful – the hobbyists find their pleasure within. They select and collect; craft and create; preserve and protect, and enjoy in their own mysterious world. ‘House of Hobbies’ was my effort to peep into the world of hobbyists in Nagpur. This series was published in The Hitavada in September-October 2010. Take a look...

Prashant Baitule - Small wonders

(Prashant Baitule with his wife Yogita)

“I can do better than this.” This statement of Prashant Baitule, after watching his sister’s beautifully crafted miniature piece displayed at a marriage function, was rewarded with a loud hoot of laughter. Especially so because ‘Taai’ was a trained bamboo craft-maker. “Everyone was praising the piece, so, my reaction was surprising for her. But, it was spontaneous. I had never touched a bamboo stick before, but I just felt it within, and uttered those words,” Prashant recalls the incident in 1990 after which he purchased a bamboo chatai (sheet made up of cane slices) and a box of adhesive, and started working.

Almost two decades have passed since then, and today, the drawing room of the 1BHK flat of this Irrigation Department clerk, in Madhuban Apartments, Wanadongri, is full of beautifully crafted miniature tables, chairs, table-pieces, houses, cycles, rickshaws, chariots, cars, and much more – every item crafted with microscopic detailing.

“Other than a ten-rupee ‘chatai’ and some adhesive, I hardly spend money on my hobby as every other decorative item comes from waste material,” he says. Old buttons and discarded ornaments turn into shining lights, cloth pieces cut away by his dress designer wife, Yogita’s graceful curtains, hard transparent packing of shirts becomes table-glass, pages of last years’ table-top calendar become rooftop – Prashant’s list of getting the best from waste is unending.

The most astonishing feature of Prashant’s miniatures is ‘perfect measurement’. The chariot may have four wheels, but their radius never defer even by a millimeter. Each of the ten steps in a five-centimeter staircase is of exactly the same length. Being a science graduate and working in a technical field for some ten years is important, but not enough to acquire such perfection. “Yes. It is an ancestral gift. I used to see my father Sadashivrao, designing gold ornaments, our traditional profession,” reveals Prashant.


“I usually gift a cane-chair that can be used as a mobile-stand to my friends. It has become a common feature in my office these days,” he smiles. “Relatives ask us to gift craft pieces,” his wife adds. “Sticks move with magical flexibility in his hands. When I tried, they broke into pieces,” she praises. While for Prashant, the skill is an outcome of passion and practice.


“The evening hours I spend with sticks recharge me for the next hectic day,” he says. His school-going son, Nishant also joins him these days. Together, they have a dream to own a duplex and name it after Prashant’s mother, Rama. A cane-replica of the same is kept in the show case.


“We dream of this house. One day, it will come true,” Baitule says with the same confidence, that he had shown some twenty years back, saying, “I can do better than this.”