The Desert Museum in Jodhpur houses about 150 different kinds of brooms, collected from makers and users in Rajasthan
Updated: 10 Jan 2014 6:11 pm
Arnna-Jharna: The Desert Museum was conceived by noted ethnologist Padma Bhushan Komal Kothari, who imagined it as a museum that celebrates living traditions and not one that archives relics.
The museum is located is located in Moklawas, a small village about 20 kilometres away from Jodhpur. It was surrounded by an arid landscape, much of which has been greened using harvested rainwater from a nearby pond
The museum houses about 150 different kinds of brooms, each of them collected from makers and users in Rajasthan. They have been divided according to their gender – those used outside are male and those inside are female.
Those used outside are always male and are made from hard twigs given that they have to often clean small pebbles and other relatively heavier refuse. The masculine word for a broom in Marwari is bungra and a feminine one is bungri.
