Diminishing sheen of the art of kalai.

Deep inside the narrow, winding lanes of Delhi Gate, in a dark, dingy shop in Kasera Bazaar that could easily pass off as an abandoned warehouse, cousins Amin, in his 70s, and Abid await clients to polish their copper or brass utensils.

What appeared to be an under-construction shop where discarded metal sheets, pots and wires, old pieces of cloth, blowers and a lot of cotton lay scattered around, and a brick staircase snakes its way to an upper storey was, in fact, the cousins' workshop, or studio in more contemporary terms, where they are skillfully keeping the dying art of kalai, or polishing or tin-coating, alive.

Abid and Amin are two of the only half a dozen kalaiwalas left in town still engaged in this centuries-old practice.

This art has existed ever since food was cooked and consumed in copper and brass utensils. It's essentially the practice of coating copper or brass with tin, and its history finds a mention in various historical texts such as Ain-i-Akbari and some from even much earlier.

However, as the world modernised, copper and brass utensils have to a large extent been replaced by plastic, aluminum and stainless steel, and with them the art of kalai is also dying a slow death. But the seventh-generation kalaigar or kalaiwalas, Amin and Abid, haven't lost hope. They say they're still in business and will continue to be till there are people around who use copper and brass utensils for their health benefits.

Amin explains that cooking in a copper or brass pot that has been coated with tin (kalai) filters the food and prevents it from germs. Abid chips in that as per hakeems, eating food cooked in such a vessel is beneficial for the brain and stomach.

'Most of the material we use for kalai is used in hikmat, even the acid used for cleaning the vessels,' he tells Dawn.

The cousins explain that their ancestors started practicing the art around 350 years ago from the same bazaar they're in now, though they kept shifting from one shop to another. 'The shop we have now is around 40 years old. And our family has been offering the service for as long as it's existed,' says Amin.

Abid then explains the process of kalai, and a short while later also demonstrates it when an elderly customer arrives to get his copper glass tin-coated. A shallow little pit has been dug in the ground to burn coal in and an equally small, temporary blast furnace blows air on the coal. 'The first step is to clean the utensil with water mixed with caustic...