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In Your Neighbourhood | From a rapper to a celebrity-favourite lamp maker: The cane lamp crafter near Bandra Masjid
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In Your Neighbourhood | From a rapper to a celebrity-favourite lamp maker: The cane lamp crafter near Bandra Masjid

The Indian Express·Naresh S·19 days ago
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By the time most shops along Bandra’s busy SV Road begin pulling their shutters down, one lane along Jama Masjid, near Quresh Nagar, only starts getting brighter. Rows of woven cane pendant lamps hang above the pavement like floating lanterns, throwing warm amber light onto passing buses, parked scooters, and pedestrians. Inside narrow roadside shops packed floor-to-ceiling with bamboo lamp frames, curved rattan shades, and unfinished lamps, workers crouch barefoot on the ground, weaving imported cane strips by hand while others heat thick rattan over open gas flames to bend them into circular frames. The smell of burnt cane and varnish drifts through the lane as work continues well past midnight. The five adjoining shops in the lane are run by brothers Zayed Khan and Tiger Khan through different brand names, the oldest among them being BEST INDIA CANE HANDICRAFTS, which they say transformed the stretch into Mumbai ’s biggest informal cane lighting market over the last 12 years.…

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