Charminar’s warq craftsmen face hard times

Warq making is a herculean task. For long hours, the workers sit pounding leather packets with hammers to make the flimsy silver or gold foils. Small pieces of silver and gold are purchased from local gold and silver merchants

Hyderabad: Lost in thoughts, Shaik Ismail, in his 60’s sits at his shop unmindful of the hustle bustle around the busy Charminar roads while the workers at the shop are busy pounding leather straps stuffed with silver pieces to make square shaped silver foils.

Silver foil or warq is a thin foil made from pure silver and gold used for garnishing sweet delicacies, pan and wrapping unani and ayurveda medicines.

Warq making is a herculean task. For long hours, the workers sit pounding leather packets with hammers to make the flimsy silver or gold foils. Small pieces of silver and gold are purchased from local gold and silver merchants.

In view of Food Safety Authority guidelines, the manufacturers have adopted synthetic alternatives to ensure both hygiene and compliance with modern food safety regulations and have done away with using leather packets. “After hours of hammering the packets we make around 100 leaves. It requires a lot of patience and hard work. Only skilled people who are experts in the art can do it,” said Ismail.

There are mainly two types – silver and gold, and both are used mainly to garnish delicacies. “Sweet shop owners and food caterers placed a major chunk of orders. However, it has declined now as they are preferring machine made foils as it is cheaper compared to handmade,” said Mizbah uddin, a warq maker.

Due to less demand and the toiling work, the business is no more lucrative. Those in the vocation say that the business is on its last legs with the number of shops declining rapidly. “Now only half a dozen shops are running around Charminar where at least two dozen shops carried the business a decade ago,” said Rauf Ahmed, a warq maker at Moghalpura.

Shortage of workers is another big issue for the vocation. “Youngsters are not preferring doing it because of the hard work and low wages. The children of other workers did not want to get into this warq making vocation and moved into other trades,” point out Rauf Ahmed.