The toys are popular with the shoppers; the intricate woodwork and sophisticated craftsmanship appeal to the collectors, while the bright colors attract children. Some of the government handicraft shops in other cities buy from him, as do big-name lifestyle stores in Delhi and Mumbai. He knows that some of them sell his products at huge markups, the profits from which never trickle down to him, but he doesn’t mind. His is a business of passion, not profits.
A young girl in Bangalore receives some of his toys from an aunt who visits Shimla on a vacation. Bored of her plastic Barbies with their cookie-cutter expressions, the girl creates some space for the new arrivals—a crocodile whose open jaws reveal a trapped fish; a menagerie consisting of a lion, two baboons, a fox, four rabbits, a billy goat, and a pair of lovebirds; and three zookeepers to watch over the animals.
"What do I name you two?" she asks, picking up the lovebirds. "How about Romeo and Juliet?" She knows nothing about Shakespeare’s most famous creations, but enough hours in front of the television watching the latest (and crappiest) Hindi movies have given her the inkling that they have something to do with romance.
"Actually, our names are Ashfaq and Meera."
The girl drops the birds in shock, but they land on the fluffy carpet and thus do not break.
"You can speak?" she asks in wonder.
"Apparently, yes." The bird sounds surprised as well.
The girl picks up the lion and the fox. "Can you guys talk, too?"
"Yes," replies the fox, "and I would much prefer it if you could keep the lion away from me. I don’t want to be eaten."
"MOM! DAD!" The girl’s shouts bring her parents running. "Mom, Dad, these toys can speak!"
The parents look at one another. "Yes, I’m sure they can, dear," says her mother. "What do they say?"
"These lovebirds said that their names are Ashfaq and Meera," says the girl. She turns to the birds. "Tell her."
The parents smile indulgently.
"My name is Ashfaq and hers is Meera."
The parents’ eyes are round as saucers.
"Sheila didn’t mention that she bought talking toys. They must have cost her a fortune."
"Tell me something else," says the girl, "something about yourselves."
"We are lovebirds in both the literal and figurative senses. We—"
"Good lord!" exclaims the father. "It has speech-recognition and natural-language-processing software. What is it?"
"We are not ‘its,’" says the bird, causing the mother to collapse into a chair in shock. "I was once the prince of Dewaldesh. I was supposed to marry the princess of the neighboring land of Pahargarh, to cement the alliance between our two nations. But a week before the wedding, I met Meera. She had come to the palace of the King of Pahargarh to sell garlands and I fell in love with her. I slipped out of the castle to meet her and followed her to her hovel. I met her in the guise of a poor carpenter and she fell in love with me as well. On the day of my wedding, I revealed my true self to her, and brought her to my palace and declared my intention to marry her. The King of Pahargarh was furious and demanded my incarceration, and my father was powerless to protect us. It was then that my grandmother, who had magical powers, turned us both into lovebirds so that we could fly away to be together."
There is pin-drop silence after the bird’s story. After what feels like hours, the father seizes the toys and locks himself in his study with his laptop and mobile phone for company.
The news channels are soon buzzing with reports of the toys that can talk. There are numerous interviews and discussions and everyone—from toy-company executives to voice-recognition scientists to armchair experts—has a theory, but none of them can be confirmed. A number of toys are dissected, but no source of intelligence can be found. Investigative reporters arrive at Mr. Puri’s shop and bombard him with questions, and the poor man, unaccustomed to dealing with the media, is bulldozed into revealing his source. From then on, it is a mad rush to the top of the mountain.
One morning, the villagers of the small, nameless village wake up to a trail of jeeps panting up the steep slopes. A vehicle is a rarity in these areas, seven much more so; long-faced men stop to gawk at them, while ruddy-cheeked women and bright-eyed children peek out of windows and doors.
The girl is sitting at the table eating her breakfast of rice porridge with yak milk before she goes to school. Her father is in the other room and does not hear the first knock on the door, but he soon hurries out when the hammering becomes insistent. He throws a reassuring look at his worried daughter before opening the door. And is nearly blinded by the flashing cameras accompanying the microphones thrust into his face.
Within the hour, reporters have taken up every inch of the small house. Father and daughter sit on a cot in the center of the room, and cameramen form a defensive ring around them. The girl clutches at her father, refusing all the biscuits and chocolates offered by the intruders. The toymaker looks befuddled as the reporters hold out the toys he has made and quiz him about their creation.
"I just carve them out of wood and my daughter paints them."
"How do you imbue them with speech?"
"I don’t understand what you are referring to."
"What wood do you use?"
"Usually pine or deodar. The woodcutter supplies the wood."
"And how do you get them to speak? What voice-recognition and speech-processing software do you use?"
The journalists question him until a trickle of sweat begins to run down his forehead. The girl is quiet throughout, holding on to her father like a drowning man clutching a lifeguard. Some reporters ask her a few questions, but most, seeing her fearful face and her trembling figure, take pity on her and leave her alone. She notices some of the men put a few toys into their pockets as they search the shop but is powerless to protest. She whimpers as a boot crushes a pheasant chick she painted the previous night and fancies that she hears the cry of the chick as well.
A couple of hours later, the house is empty. There was barely anything to film in the small, sparsely furnished dwelling; the reporters thought the toymaker was either a simpleton or a master strategist, and retreated to figure out their next moves. A couple of them inserted hundred-rupee notes and visiting cards into the toymaker’s hands, while others turned their cameras on the villagers, who looked even more clueless than the toymaker himself. The girl walks through the ruin the reporters have left in their wake and takes in the overturned workbench and the wood supplies strewn all around, her spilled paints creating a mishmash on the shop floor.
Over the next few weeks, the girl’s life is turned inside out. A man from Delhi offers to become their agent and "handle everything the right way, so you don’t need to worry at all." He whisks them off to Delhi, to the home of a millionaire toy manufacturer who allots them a corner of his factory, a workspace larger than their village. At first, the toymaker has no idea what to do, but his daughter brings out a toy kitten, one of a handful of carvings she managed to salvage from their shop back home. She picks up a brush, dips it into a bottle of white paint, and begins her work on the kitten, telling it the tale of a cat with a huge smile. Following his daughter’s lead, the toymaker begins carving, making kings and queens and wizards and their horses and lions and tigers into which his daughter paints life. He is asked to sign a few documents and affixes his thumbprint on them, not understanding the lawyer’s convoluted explanations. He is a woodworker, his work is to do with wood and chisels and hammers and saws; he doesn’t care about anything else.
The toy manufacturer shelves his plans to create a new range of designer dolls and launches a publicity blitz for the wooden novelties he has named the "Magic Collection." Soon, there are snaking queues of people waiting outside stores to buy the handmade creations, and the manufacturer pushes the toymaker and his daughter to create more of them, and faster. The girl is taken out of school and given private tutors so that she can devote maximum time to painting the toys. She is supplied with scripts of stories she is to tell the toys and scolded when she goes off-script. A couple of Hollywood movie studios hear of the girl’s talents and rush to collaborate with the manufacturer. The toymaker is asked to create a line of superhero toys, and the girl finds herself repeating the same story day after day to a bunch of costumed figurines.