The last generation of village blacksmith (video)

Beating into shape red hot metal is what Pradip Karmakar has always done throughout his life; he says it is the only thing he knows how to do.

But the times have changed and his craft is dying down with the unstoppable progress of industrialisation and technology.

Now Pradip struggles to keep his family afloat with one of the oldest professions with the craft he had learned from his forefathers--blacksmithing.

It is always the clinking sound of metal beating metal around the shabby hut he calls workshop in Joypara Bazar of Dhaka’s Dohar upazila.

Smoke curling out of the roof, inside was 45-year-old Pradip – bent in focus and eyebrows frowned, beating away on hot iron – when The Daily Star Online found him.

The dark and sweat-stained room barely had space for him and his assistants with all the scattered metal scraps, glowing coal in the forge with a big blower, an anvil, and of course, the finished items.

It is only a busy day in the weekly haat day, otherwise circumstances make it hard for him to pay his employees’ daily wages.

“I am determined. I will not allow my children to take up the hammer as I did,” he said. “I am continuing this profession with the knowledge passed on to me by my father”.

But now, demand of this craftsmanship is coming down among people every day, he said.

Tanu Karmaker, an apprentice at Pradip’s workshop, was the only young worker in the shop. He says he will switch the job if he gets a chance because the craft is dying out.

Struggling himself and earning to educate his brother at Rajshahi University, Tanu says it is a very hard life to live by the fire and iron. “I will go abroad if I can”.

Tanu and Pradip might just be the very last generation of blacksmiths – a profession which is one of the oldest from the time when humans tried to work iron.

Tomorrow, with the passing of today, there just might not be any more traditional blacksmiths left who have been keeping the tradition iron crafting up for thousands of years.