Be it sports or army or any field, there is no dearth of talent in Haryana, but what if people do not appreciate the talent, it is most likely to disappoint the concerned person. To some extent, it is happening with the Bondwal family hailing from Bahadurgarh of Jhajjar district whose three generations have received National Award in the field of handicraft which clearly depicts their talent along with their dedication to the field work. Even Neeraj Bondwal, third generation of the family continues to work diligently. Despite that, it seems quite strange that people and the art lovers neither give necessary respect for their hard work nor even the value of their work. The hallmark of Neeraj›s talent is evident from the fact that he has also created artwork for the new Parliament. He was asked from there to create an artifact for it. Notably, only selected artwork were to be installed on a particular wall of the new parliament building namely Central Vista and it took several days.
It is worth noting that Neeraj had made an elephant sculpture which took him at least a period of around five months. He has also made artwork of 6 elephants inside the same. In such a situation, making these artifacts was a very complicated task. Following the completion of this artifact he has displayed the same along with other artwork for sale as well as in exhibition in the fair in Surajkund. He said that he has put a lot of hard work and time into making it, but when he asks for a reasonable price, people look at him questioningly.
The result of the family›s hard work and dedication can be gauged from the fact that the third generation of the family has been continuously in this field for around the last 25 years. Neeraj Bondwal of the family is taking forward the legacy of his forefathers. Further it was apprised that such things continue to discourage putting the artists in a state of disparity. In the Bondwal family, Neeraj›s father Mahavir Parsad and his grandfather Budhiram were conferred with National award in 1979 and 1994 respectively for their excellent work which brought laurels to the state.
Neeraj›s uncle Rajendra Prasad has received many awards in the family. He was conferred with the National Award for his work in the field of handicrafts in the year 1984. Apart from this he has been awarded the Shilp Guru Award in 2015 for his excellent work in the same field. In such a situation, it is clear that the whole family has done a lot of work in this field on behalf of the state. They continued to make handicrafts for decades but when it comes to earning a living through it, people overestimate the value of their creation which is ironic. Giving information, another member of the family said that Neeraj has been honored by UNESCO, apart from this, he kept giving lectures on this field in the National Institute of Fashion Technology. He said that earlier work was done on Ivory but following the ban on it in 1992, he started working on sandalwood which is very expensive.
