Bangalore: 'Gombe Sister' Potrays Life through Amazing Dolls

from Jessie Rodrigues
for Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore (AF)

Bangalore, Mar 28: Sr Francoise Bosteels, popularly known as 'Gombe Sister' is a famous doll maker who specializes in conveying meaningful messages through her art. 'Gombe' in Kannada means doll.

An exclusive exhibition of her dolls was held at NBCLC convention hall here recently to portray, 'the images of people's life through the needle's eye'.

Sr Bosteels prefers to make dolls at night when it is all calm and quiet.

An immense appreciation from the visitors stating that these dolls convey the message of people's everyday life. These inanimate dolls speak through words as Sr Bosteels walks with them, talks with them and sings with them.

Dolls in life’s musings

As a child, Francoise loved to play with dolls like any other kid, only, she never even dreamt that she would reach a stage where dolls would make her life really worth and become an integral part of her life. She would dress and undress them, bathe and nurtur them and treasure each one of them in her childhood days.

During a personal interview I had with Francoise, she revealed her very interesting personal story saying, 'I was 16 when a sickness threatened my life and I was confined to bed for months. It was during this time that I started creating 'my own' little dolls with the material my mother provided me.'

'While struggling between life and death, I could sense the rhyme and rhythm of life screaming out from my heart into the dolls I created! Each doll I made became colourful and alive. They evoked experience and stories in my life’s musings. Thus they slowly grew into expressions of my playful imagination. Some found me lonely and they began to say, 'She speaks to her dolls, not to us!'

'I  found ‘treasures’ in my silent conversation with my ‘dolls’ and a learning process commenced, unaware, through endless imaginations, intuitions and dreams within me. I began to listen to the “cry”, “laughter’, “play” of life along with my dolls. My loneliness became solitude in my company with the dolls. In the womb of solitude a profound self-surrender to the mystery of life subtly welled up at the interior realms of my being,' she said in an emotional tone.

Years later, she was called to live her religious life in India. The simple way of village life fascinated her; little girls leading the sheep to the greens and mountain streams, women who deck their tresses with fragrant buds, children with scant resources fashioning things to play with, men who nurture trees and prune them, the flower-man on the bicycle; so have familiar sights such as women carrying vegetables in hand-made palm-leaf baskets and water in pots and jars, women learning to write their names or weaving bamboo baskets, men in the street corner ironing crumpled clothes or beating the drum in harmony with the earth around.

Her fascination became an aesthetic experience translated into dolls. She worked at night when everything was calm and peaceful. Then in the dark of the night she sought the secret of people’s pain and celebration through her dolls.