Fit for a miniature Indian highway

He’s watched the cheap Chinese toys come in, a flimsy, mass-produced onslaught. That’s of little concern. He’s doing something more meaningful, something that will last.

Balwinder Singh slowly works the sandpaper around the cargo bay of the miniature wooden truck, one of dozens in his roadside store. Horse carts are the most difficult, he says, with their rounded staves. Then there are the John Deere tractors, the combines, the gasoline trucks, reflecting the rich agricultural land that is Punjab, India’s breadbasket.

You play with what you see, and this is what children see.

For 17 years, the former furniture maker has been selling his diminutive wooden wares along the roadside, carefully arranged in lines, orderly, never honking or cutting each other off, in contrast to the real versions rumbling by a few feet away.

Over those years, the town of Dhanaula became locally famous for the brightly painted toys, and soon shopkeepers started coming from miles around to buy wholesale.

“Chinese toys have cheap electronics that break within a few days,” says Gurpreet Singh Bagga, who buys for his shop 50 miles away. “And it’s good to have things made in India for Indians. People get jobs.”

As business grew, the 32-year-old Singh drew in his family members, employing his brother to cut the wood, his wife to sand and buff, his children to paint, producing an average of five a day. “It’s good — now the family can work together,” he says.

He even got his father to leave his day-laborer job and become chief salesman, although truth be told, he’s no Dale Carnegie, never suggesting the customer buy a second one, take the more expensive one, consider starting a collection.

“No, we wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” says the polite, distinguished Beant Singh, 50. “They just buy what they want.”

These days their biggest customers are city dwellers, nostalgic for a rural India they no longer know, and the occasional truck driver looking for a replica of his own belching truck, minus the dents and dirt. For locals, his toys seem too much like everyday life, the younger Singh reckons.

Singh is part of a long tradition of Indian toy makers, some of whom have passed on their craft from generation to generation. Archaeological evidence records ingenious Indus Valley playthings dating back 5,000 years.

One of India’s most famous toys, ordered by an 18th century king, Tipu Sultan, and now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, features an almost life-size mechanical wooden tiger mauling a British soldier. The sultan, who was no fan of the British colonizers, designed it so that when a small crank is turned, it emits a roar, and then the sound of a (British) moan as the soldier’s hand covers his mouth.

As potential customers slow down for a look, Singh says, he’ll size them up. If they’re in a posh Mercedes and don’t know the value of a rupee, he’ll add a little onto the price, up to 50% on the toys, which sell from $1.50 to $6. Occasionally, a high-end collector will request a special-order model with plush seats and working doors, which he’ll sell for upward of $60.

This love affair with all things small earns the family $150 a month, not bad for these parts, and it sure beats the hard work of day laboring.

Most of his customers see his wares on the roadside and stop for an impulse buy. His best allies are children, who make such a ruckus the parents are forced to turn back. Two kids in the car, even better for him, especially if the parents don’t want to suffer miles of backseat fighting.

But the parents control the purse strings. “They’re very colorful and I wanted to buy one for my child,” says Prem Deep, a lawyer from New Delhi who stopped to take a look. “But they’re a bit expensive, so I’m going to wait.”

The way Singh sees it, his wooden toys are a lot better than those computer games and virtual world pastimes that leave children overweight, distracted, harboring a distant gaze. These make kids move, run, exercise and let their imagination do the work.

What about his 10-year old son, who paints the orange, blue and green markings on the toy trucks after school and on weekends?

“He’d rather play with anything but trucks,” he says. “He sees so many of them, he gets sick of them.”

mark.magnier@latimes.com

Anshul Rana in The Times’ New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.