The man lifts a blackened pot with a cloth-wrapped hand and turns it over the fire as coal crackles beneath. A pinch of white powder hits the heated surface, and in a few swift strokes the dull metal turns silver, catching the light before disappearing again into smoke. In Daryaganj’s Uncha Chalan, Nayeem sits on the roadside with his tools and a small fire, working without a shop, continuing a craft he has known since childhood. Qalai, the coating of copper and brass utensils with tin, once kept these lanes busy; today, it passes mostly unnoticed. “This is not just a job. It is what we inherited,” he says.
Now 50, he learned the work from his father, who learned it from his own; three generations tied together by the same routine of fire, metal, and hand. “Earlier, we had so much work that we could barely keep up,” he recalls. “Now it has reduced to barely 25 per cent of what it used to be.” The drop shows in his earnings as well. Where he once made between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 a month, he now manages around Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000, depending on whether customers arrive.
He explains the process as he works, almost without looking up. “Qalai uses tin. We use coal, nosadar, which is a white sand-like substance, and acid to clean and prepare the utensils before coating them.” Each utensil demands time and care; smaller ones cost Rs 60 to Rs 70, while larger ones can go up to Rs 800, especially if the metal is old and worn.
There are still people who come, some from Gurgaon, Nizamuddin, Seelampur, and Zafrabad, carrying utensils that have stayed in their homes for years. During the wedding season, the work picks up a little, as such pieces are still given as gifts. But most kitchens have shifted to stainless steel and non-stick cookware, and with that shift, the need for qalai has almost disappeared. “We are still doing this work, and maybe our sons will continue for some time,” Nayeem says. “But we do not want the next generation to depend on it. The problem is, what else can they do?”
A few metres away, Rafeeq sits inside a small shop where the walls are darkened by years of smoke and the shelves hold utensils waiting to be worked on. He has been here for 30 years, part of a line that stretches further back. “This shop is more than 100 years old, older than Independence,” he says. “My grandfather started it. This is our family work.” He speaks of how things have changed without pause. “It is not like before anymore. Now we mostly get work during the wedding season. The rest of the time, we somehow manage our household expenses.” There is no certainty left in the trade. “If you want to work, you work. If not, it does not really make much difference now,” he adds, pointing to the slow days that stretch longer than before.
The cost of tin has risen to around Rs 8,000, and even though it is sourced locally within Delhi, the expense has made the work harder to sustain. Not far from him, Mohammad Hafeez, 65, continues to do qalai the way he has for over five decades, having started when he was very young. “This is all I have known,” he says, running his hand over a utensil before beginning.
He explains the details that come only with years of practice. “In brass utensils, only the inside is coated. But for copper utensils, the entire surface, inside and outside, needs to be done.” Each piece is different, and the method changes with it, something that cannot be rushed or simplified. Hafeez has seen the trade when it filled the lanes with steady work and when it began to thin out, and now he continues much the same way, even as fewer people come looking for it.
In these lanes, the fire still burns and the tools remain unchanged, but the work has slowed, and what once sustained entire families now survives on the edges, held together by those who continue to sit by the fire and wait.