The neem trees around Ashok Kumar’s house sway intensely in the breeze. You hear a strong whoosh sustained by thousands of leaves that never stop rustling. Even as the day’s heat continues to rise, the breeze makes the shed in which Ashok Kumar is working more bearable.

On a wide canvas, 46-year-old Ashok Kumar bends and ties together slick bamboo stalks above coloured chalk outlines to create the shape of an eye, to trace the forehead and then Cupid’s bow of a smile. As the goddess’ face takes shape, Ashok Kumar stretches his arms and legs before starting work on the rest of her body.

Ashok is working on a 20 by 10 cut-out of the Tamil goddess, Mariamman, seated on a lion and a swan (the creature varying each second based on the lights), which will be lit up a few weeks from now at a village festival in Tirunelveli. It will take him 2 weeks to complete the work, during which time six women, including his wife, will string the serial lights to this bamboo frame.

A few meters away, inside the small house-turned-workshop, the women clip and twist wires with small multicoloured serial bulbs, checking them every once in a while by connecting them to the power socket, the sharp shades of the LED lights briefly illuminating their faces with bright hues; now yellow, now red, then blue.

Dhanalakshmi Lighting Company in Gandhi Nagar Colony in Arasanarkulam village in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district was started five years ago, but Ashok acquainted himself with the trade quite early, learning the craft when he was just 13.

Does art come naturally to him, given that he’s drawing well-proportioned figures on giant canvases? “I learnt it on my own,” he smiles, bent over his work, with a modesty that’s rare to come by.

“Back when I started, no one in my village was doing it. My father climbed palm trees for a living but I’ve always done this. Now a few of them who learnt from me have started making cut-outs like mine in my village itself,” he tells us.

Ashok and his wife Dhanalakshmi, who got married 19 years ago, together toiled long hours to run the business from their workshop. Two years ago, with help from the Srinivasan Service Trust, the social arm of TVS Motor Company and Sundaram Clayton, Dhanalakshmi formed the Gandhi women’s self-help group. The women helped Ashok and Dhanalakshmi expand their business and in turn, were given training, empowering them to take up a business opportunity.

So far, Ashok has trained over 200 women through the Gandhi self-help group in fixing serial lights and creating cut-outs, helping them make it a livelihood. Currently he employs a team of 15 members, both men and women, to help run the company. Today, Dhanalakshmi Lighting Company has an annual turnover of close to Rs 10 lakh.

SST has also helped Ashok and Dhanalakshmi procure loans, in addition to nominating their company for the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Awards 2019. The CII Awards identify and celebrate innovative Indian enterprises across industry segments and sectors.

While Ashok sources the bulbs from Richie Street in Chennai, the bamboo sticks are brought in from Madurai. Earlier the problem was in transporting cut-outs as a single piece but today, his cut-outs are sent as pieces to Kerala, Chennai and Mumbai. Some clients buy the cut-outs while others prefer to rent them. Starting from small ones priced at Rs 5,000 to 30 feet by 27 feet giant figures costing Rs 3 lakh, Ashok has made cut-outs of all sizes and shapes!

While there’s a good market of serial light cut-out makers in Dindigul district in Tamil Nadu, Ashok tells us that he pioneered the craft in Tirunelveli district.

A Class 10 pass-out, Ashok gets help from his eldest daughter Durga Sri, who is studying computer science engineering at a college in Thoothukudi, to programme the serial bulbs. She also helps him come up with new designs. “I’m not very good with computers. My daughter gets printouts of models from the computer and I work on them,” he says, showing us a colour printout of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose with grids drawn on it with a pencil.

Starting his day at 9 am every day, Ashok sometimes works until 11 in the night. Employees usually put in 7 hours a day on an average and earn Rs 20 for fixing every set of 50 bulbs.

Unlike other businesses, Ashok’s market has no peak period, he tells us. “Every season is a good season for us. The recent elections kept us very busy. We’ve done cut-outs for all leaders starting from MGR, Karunanidhi and Amma to the latest TTV Dhinakaran,” he smiles.