For fifty-year old Governor’s Award recipient Yanger Pongen of Mongchen village, woodworking has been the only job he has known, and in his own words, “I plan to continue my woodworking profession as long as my eyes can see and my clients ask for my work.”
Yanger, a father of two, started woodworking in the nineties when he was but a youth. He recalls how intrigued he got seeing his father, who was a policeman by profession, making ‘rough’ furniture for home use. He started by helping his father in the carpentry and hasn’t looked back ever since.
Yanger recollects how he started around the year 1996 making candle stands and tea trays.
With no educational qualification and struggling to make ends meet after getting married, he started making bespoke furniture, handicrafts and decorative items.
His woodworking picked up steam and in no time, he was awarded the vocational excellence award by the Rotary Club in 2009.
The next year, he went on to win the reputed Governor’s Award for Arts & Craft in 2010.
He also received an appreciation award at the North East Expo in New Delhi back in the year 2006.
With no training apart from working with his father in his youth, Yanger has now many youths helping him, who learnt the craft from him.
“There are many young carpenters in the colony whom I’ve trained, who are now full-fledged carpenters in their own right,” Yanger said.
Yanger, who works out of his own home in Kumlong Ward, confided that he is not as successful as many others since he does not have a physical shop set up in the town but added that he earns enough to keep his family afloat.
Being in the business for a while now, Yanger now focuses more on wood carvings.
“I’m not young anymore,” he laments. “I focus more on wood carvings while the youths I’ve trained work on the furniture, with my supervision of course,” he adds.
Carving wood by hand is no easy task, Yanger declared. “It’s very tiring and it takes a lot of time to complete, but the satisfaction of a successful project is the best,” he expressed.
People nowadays want personalized hand crafted items as gifts on wedding as well as for other functions, he said, adding that they want the “unique” products.
“Even though wood carving projects are tiring and time consuming, it fetches decent prices. It actually pays the days spent working and more,” Yanger confides.
He went on to say that there are many readily available and cheap and mass produced furniture in the market these days but the ones made of good wood have more tolerance and it’s more permanent as long as the workmanship is good.
“To make something out of nothing but a block of wood in itself is quite satisfying,” Yanger reasoned. “But I’ve spent many sleepless nights imagining the idea, but when it all comes together, it gives a satisfaction like no other,” he declared.
It may be noted that Yanger has been in the woodworking business from a time when there weren’t any readily available plans on the internet.
On being asked what advice he can give to aspiring entrepreneurs, Yanger stated that most people are simply copying to do something just because one is finding success in a particular field.
He asserted that, just because someone is finding success in something doesn’t mean another will too.
“One must find one’s own passion and be persistent to follow through to find success,” Yanger concluded.
