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The few families in Kummari Veedhi that are still engaged with the craft buy matti (clay) from a dealer a few months ahead of Vinayak Chaturthi every year. Together they buy a truckload of mud, roughly five tonnes. They pay Rs. 15,000 for the mud and Rs. 10,000 for its transportation from specific locations in the neighbouring Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh. Getting the right jinka matti – a mud with the natural presence of glue is crucial for making both clay artefacts and idols.Paradesam’s family takes nearly a tonne or 1,000 kilograms of the load. A week before Diwali some of the mud can still be seen stacked outside his house in big gunny bags. &nbsp;The dark red mud is dry and lumpy and they must slowly begin mixing it with water to bring it to the right consistency. Later it will be stamped upon to mix it up; Paradesam says it feels hard and also has small rocks that poke his feet.Once the clay has reached the right texture, the master craftsman brings out the heavy wooden wheel marked with splashes of dried up clay from a corner and places it on a stand. He then folds a cloth over an empty paint can and that becomes his seat in front of the wheel.Paradesam's wheel, like other potter's wheels in Kummari Veedhi, is a manual one. He has heard of an electrically run wheel but is unsure how he can control it. “The speed should vary for every kunda [pot] and deepam [lamp]” he points out.Throwing a handful of wet clay onto the centre of the wheel, his hands work gently but firmly, digging into the clay and gradually shaping the diya. The smell of wet mud fills the air as the almost metre-wide wheel begins rotating. To keep the momentum going, he turns it with the help of a large wooden stick. "I am getting old now. I can't always use the same force," says Paradesam. Once the diya starts taking shape and becomes sturdy, the potter uses a thread to slice it off the moving wheel.As they come off the wheel he arranges the diyas and flowerpots carefully in a row on a rectangular plank of wood. The clay items must dry for 3-4 days in the shade. After drying, the items are placed in a kiln and baked for over two days. The kiln is lit once every 2-3 weeks between July to October (for Vinayak Chaturthi, Dussehra and Diwali). During other times of the year it is lit barely once a month.

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"There were times during the freedom struggle, too, when things looked bleak. We were told you cannot win. You are up against the greatest empire in the world . . . But we rose above all those warnings and threats. And fought anyway. That’s why we are here today."R. Nallakannu

“Vote for the Yellow Box!” went the cries. “Choose the auspicious manjal petti!”This was Madras Presidency during the 1937 provincial elections held under British rule.The slogans came from groups of youngsters beating drums. Most of them not of voting age. And ineligible to cast ballots even if they had been. not all adults could vote.Franchise restrictions favoured land and property owners and, in rural areas, rich farmers.The sight of young people without a vote campaigning vigorously was not entirely new.As early as July 1935, Justice—the newspaper and organ of the Justice Party—noted with disdain, and not a little contempt:You might visit any village even in outlying areas and you were sure to come across groups of urchins wearing Congress khaddar uniforms and Gandhi caps and holding aloft the tricoloured banner. nearly eighty per cent of these men, workers and volunteers had been drawn from the voteless, propertyless, unemployed hundreds of the urban and village areas . . .One of those youngsters in 1937 was R. Nallakannu, barely 12 at the time, now 97 [in 2022]. He’s telling us of the drama, laughing about his having been one of those ‘urchins’. &nbsp;“Those who owned land and paid a land tax of 10 rupees or more could vote,” he recalls. The 1937 polls did see some broadening of the franchise. But “it was never meant to allow more than 15–20 per cent of adults to have a vote,” he says. “And not more than 1,000 to 2,000 people voted in any one constituency.”

Nallakannu was born in Srivaikuntam, then in Tirunelveli district. Today, the taluk of Srivaikuntam falls in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district (which used to be called Tuticorin till 1997).Nallakannu’s activism, though, began early.“When I was a child, in fact. Mill workers in Thoothukudi, close to my town, struck work. That was one of the Harvey Mills group. This came to be known as the Panchalai [Cotton Mills] workers’ strike.“To support them, rice would be collected from every home in our town and sent in boxes to the strikers’ families in Thoothukudi. It was young boys like us who would go around to collect the rice.” People were poor, “but every household contributed something. I was just 5 or 6 at the time, and this solidarity with the workers’ struggle had a huge impact on me. It meant I would get used to involvement in politics quite early.”We pull him back to the 1937 polls: What did he mean by voting for a manjal petti or yellow box?“There were only two main parties in Madras then,” he says. “Congress and the Justice Party. Instead of symbols, parties were identified by a ballot box of some colour. The Congress, for whom we then campaigned, was assigned a yellow box. For the Justice Party, there was a pachchai petti—green box. That was the best way at the time for the voter to identify which party he was supporting.”And yes, there was much colour and theatre around the polls even then. The Hindu writes that “Devadasi campaigner Thanjavur Kamukannamal . . . would ask everyone to vote in the “snuff box!” Gold or yellow being a common colour for snuff boxes of the time. The Hindu itself carried a headline calling on readers to ‘Fill the Yellow Boxes’.“And of course, I could not vote at age 12,” says Nallakannu. “But I went out and canvassed as strongly as I could.” Three years later, he would be involved in political campaigns beyond the electoral. And “beating a parai [a type of drum] and yelling slogans.”

But he was no longer a Congress supporter. “I was with the Communist Party of India [CPI] from age 15,” says Nallakannu, ‘Comrade RNK’ to his friends. Formal membership of the party would have to wait till he was older. But RNK would emerge one of the most important figures of the Communist movement in Tamil Nadu over the next few decades. He would be seeking—often successfully— support for the sengodi (red flag) and not the manjal petti (yellow box).

“There was only one school in our part of Tirunelveli and so it was simply called ‘School’. That was its only name.”Nallakannu is speaking to us in his small home office in Chennai. Beside him, on a sideboard of his table, are a bunch of little busts and small statuettes. Lenin, Marx and Periyar right next to him. Behind them, a bigger, golden statuette of Ambedkar that stands in front of a larger sketch of revolutionary Tamil poet Subramania Bharati. Behind the small Periyar bust is another sketch, drawn from a photo of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. And next to all these, a calendar that asks all of us to ‘Use Less Water’.The whole tableau captures, at a glance, the intellectual development and history of the man we are in conversation with for the third time. It is June 25, 2022. The first of our interviews with him was in 2019.“Bharathiyar was the most inspirational poet for me,” says Nallakannu. “Often his poems or songs were banned.” He cites some lines from ‘Suthinthara Pallu’ (Independence Song), an extraordinary song by the poet. “He wrote it, I think, in 1909. So he celebrates independence 38 years before India attained it in 1947!”We will dance, we will sing For we have achieved the joy of independenceThe time when we used to call Brahmins as ‘Sir’ has gone, The time when we used to call the white men as ‘lord’ has gone,The time when we saluted those who took alms from us has gone, The time when we serve people who made fun of us has gone. In all places the only talk is about freedom . . .

Bharathi died in 1921, four years before Nallakannu was born. The song was written even earlier. But it, and others, inspired him through his fighting years. RNK knew many songs and poems of Bharati before he was 12. He is able to recall quite a few of the verses and lyrics verbatim even today. “I learnt some of those from the Hindi pundit Pallavesam Chettiar at school,” he says. And of course, none of those were on the official curriculum.“I also got a book of Bharathiyar’s writings from S. Satyamurti when he came to the school. It was a collection of his poems Thesiya Geetham.” Satyamurti was a freedom fighter, politician and a patron of the arts. Bharati was one of the first to acclaim the 1917 october Revolution in Russia and even wrote a song in its praise.It’s good to try and understand Nallakannu through his love for Bharati and the prism of the agrarian and working- class struggles he was part of for eight decades.For it is really difficult to tell the story of ‘Comrade RNK’ otherwise. This is one of the most self-effacing souls I have ever met. He gently but firmly declines to place himself at the centre of any of the great events, strikes and struggles he tells us about. His role in some of those was vital and central all right. But you can never get him to portray or narrate it that way.“Comrade RNK was one of the founding leaders of the farmers’ movement in our state,” says G. Ramakrishnan. ‘GR’ is a state committee member of the CPI(M), but unreservedly salutes the role and contribution of the 97-year-old CPI leader. “Through the decades—starting from when he was still a teenager—it was he who, along with Srinivas Rao, created the bases of the Kisan Sabha across the state. Those remain a source of the strength for the Left even today. And Nallakannu helped create that by tireless campaigns and struggles all across Tamil Nadu.”Nallakannu’s struggles seamlessly integrate farmers’ battles with the anticolonial movement. And also, very importantly, with the anti-feudal battles that were so crucial to Tamil Nadu of that time. Those too flow over strongly post-1947. His fight was and remains one for many forgotten freedoms. not just Independence from British rule.

“We’d fight them at night, throw stones—those were the weapons we had—and chase them away. Sometimes, there would be pitched battles. This happened several times during the protests that came in the 1940s. We were still boys, but we fought. Day and night, with our kind of weapons!”Fight whom? And chase them away from what and where?“The uppalam [salt pans] near my town. All the salt pans were under British control. The condition of the workers was miserable. Like around the mills, where the struggles began decades earlier. There were protests and there was a lot of public sympathy and support for them.“The police simply functioned as the agents of the salt pan owners. In one clash, a sub-inspector died. There had even been an attack on the police station there. Then they set up a mobile patrolling unit. They would go to the pans during the day and come to camp near our villages at night. That’s when we clashed with them.” These protests and clashes went on and off for a couple of years, maybe more. “But it was around 1942 and the Quit India movement that they really grew.”

Nallakannu’s taking part in all of this while barely a teenager did not go down well with his father Ramasamy Thevar. A farmer, Thevar owned some 4–5 acres of land and had six children. The young RNK was often punished at home. And sometimes his father would withhold paying his school fees.“People would tell him—'Your son does not study? He’s always out and shouting. Looks like he’s gone and joined the Congress’.” The deadline for paying the fees at ‘School’ fell between the 14th and 24th of each month. “If I asked him for the fees, he’d shout at me: ‘You leave your studies and help your uncles on the farm’.”“As time ran out, someone close to my father would placate him. They would promise him that I would not speak and act the way I was doing. only then would he pay the fees.”However, “the more he opposed my life, my ways, the deeper my dissent grew. I made it up to intermediate level in Tamil, at The Hindu College, Madurai. It was actually at the Tirunelveli junction. But it was called Hindu College, Madurai. I only studied there two years. I couldn’t go further.”Because he was busy taking part in protests. And significantly—though he is far too modest to say it—he had even begun to organize them. RNK was swiftly emerging a young leader. But one who never sought, and mostly avoided, a high profile.

It’s hard to keep a chronological track of the events and actions he was involved in. More so as they were many in number and occurred on quite different fronts.He sums up the most important moments for him during the freedom struggle simply, though: “The battles around the Quit India movement.” He was not yet 17 at that point, but already an important figure in the protests. The years between age 12 and 15 were also the time of his transition from Congressman to Communist.What sort of protest meetings did he help organize or take part in?Early on, “we had megaphones made of tin. We’d gather any tables and chairs we could in a village or town and sing. Mainly the table was for the speaker to stand on and address the crowd. Mind you, crowds would unfailingly show up.” Once again, he says little about his own role in mobilizing people. Though it was foot soldiers like him who made that possible.“Later, speakers like Jeevanandam would stand on those tables and talk to fairly large audiences. With no mikes. He did not need them.“Over time, we began to get decent mikes and loudspeakers. The most favoured one,” he recalls, “was what were called the ‘Chicago mikes’ or Chicago Radio systems. Of course, we could not afford them too often.”

What about when there was a British crackdown? How did they communicate then?“There were many such situations. Like after the Royal Indian navy [RIN] mutiny [1946]. There was a total crackdown on the Communists. But there were raids earlier too. And the British would sometimes search every party office in the villages. That happened even after Independence, by the way, when the party was banned. We did have bulletins and magazines. Like Janashakti, for instance. But we had other modes of communication. Some of those were simple signals going back centuries.“Right from the time of Kattabomman [legendary 18 century anti-British fighter], people used to place neem twigs at the entrance of a home. It was a sign to indicate that someone inside was sick with smallpox or other ailments. But it was also used as a secret symbol to signal that a meeting was going on there.‘If there were sounds of a baby crying inside the house, that meant the meeting was still on. If the cow dung near the entrance was wet, the meeting was still on. If the dung there was dry, it was a signal to turn away and leave, as danger lurked. or meant that the meeting was over.’What was RNK’s greatest source of inspiration through the freedom struggle?‘The Communist Party was our greatest source of inspiration.’

‘Why did I remove my moustache when I was arrested?’ RNK laughs. ‘I never did. And I never grew it to disguise my face in the first place. If that was the case, why should I have grown one at all?‘No, the police burnt it off with a cigarette. That was part of the torture inflicted on me by an Inspector Krishnamurthy from Madras city. He tied my hands at 2 a.m. He only untied them the next morning at 10. Then he beat me with his baton for a long time.’Again, like many fellow freedom fighters, he recalls the incident with no personal rancour. no animosity towards his torturer. RNK never looked for the police inspector in later days to settle scores. It never once occurred to him to do so.‘This actually happened in 1948,’ he says, after India attained Independence. ‘The party had been banned in many provinces, including Madras, and remained that way till 1951.

‘But you should understand there were also anti-feudal battles that had to be fought. That we had to pay a price for. And these began long before 1947—and continued well after Independence.‘Freedom movement, social reform, anti-feudal struggles—we combined these issues. That’s how we worked.We fought for better and equal wages. We fought for the abolition of untouchability. We played a serious role in the temple entry movements.‘The campaign for abolition of the zamindari system was a major movement in Tamil Nadu. The state had many important zamindaris. We fought the mirasdari [land held under hereditary title] and inamdari [lands assigned free to individuals or institutions by the ruler] systems. It was the Communists who were at the forefront of these battles. There were very major landlords to contend with, and their private armed goondas and thugs.‘There were people like Punniyoor Saambasiva Iyer, Nedumanam Saamiyappa Muthaliyaar, Poondi Vandiyar. They held thousands of acres of fertile land.’We are now sitting in on a fascinating history lesson. From a man who helped make that history.

‘There were also the centuries-old practices of brahmatheyam and thevathaanam.‘Under the first, lands were given for free to Brahmins by the rulers. They ruled and profited from the land. They would not directly cultivate it, but the profits would go to them. Under thevathaanam, such gifts of land would be made to temples. Sometimes a temple could be gifted an entire village. The small tenants and workers lived at their mercy. Anyone who stood up to them could and would be evicted.‘Know this, these institutions, the madams [mutts or monasteries] owned six lakh acres of land. Maybe even now. But their power has been strongly curtailed by people’s unflinching struggles.“The Tamil Nadu Zamindari Abolition Act came into force in 1948. But it was the zamindars and giant landowners who were compensated. not the people who had worked the land for them. The affluent tenants got some compensation. The poor who worked in the fields got nothing. Between 1947–49, there were a large number of evictions from these temple lands. And we launched huge protests along the lines of: ‘only when farmers own the land can they live well’.“These were our battles—and from 1948 to 1960, the fight went on for getting their rights. C. Rajagopalachari [Rajaji] as Chief Minister took the side of the landlords and mutts. We said, ‘Land to the Tiller’. Rajaji said land belongs to those who have the documents. But our struggles saw us break that total power these temples and mutts had. We defied their harvest rules and protocols. We refused to be slaves.“And, of course, all this could not be separated from the social battles as well.“I remember witnessing one of the protests at a temple one night. The temples would all have chariot festivals. And it was the farmers who would pull the chariots forward with ropes. We said they will not come to pull the chariots anywhere if the evictions continued. We also asserted our right to take some of the grain back for sowing.”

Now he’s moving back and forth between pre and post Independence periods. At one level, that’s confusing. At another, it brings home the complexity of those times. That there were many freedoms involved. That some of these did not have clear start and end dates. That people like RNK remained steadfast in the pursuit of those freedoms.“We also, right through those decades, fought against the beatings and torture of the workers.“In 1943, Dalit workers were still being whipped. And having cow dung water poured on the wounds created by the whips. They had to go to work at 4 or 5 a.m. in the morning—whenever the rooster crowed. They had to be at the mirasdars’ lands to bathe the cattle, gather the cow dung, then go to water the fields. There was a village near Thiruthuraipoondi then in Thanjavur district. That’s where we held their protest.“There was a huge demonstration headed by Srinivas Rao of the Kisan Sabha. The sentiment was ‘if they hit you for carrying the red flag, hit them back’. Finally the mirasdars and Mudhaliars at Thiruthuraipoondi signed an agreement that this whipping, use of cow dung water and other barbaric practices would be stopped.”RNK plays down his own huge role in these great battles all the way from the 1940s to the 1960s and well beyond. He would succeed Srinivas Rao as the head of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), Tamil Nadu. In the decades after 1947, the silent foot soldier would emerge a strong general in the battles of farmers and labourers.

Both of them are excited and emotional. We are doing one of our interviews at CPI(M) leader and freedom fighter N. Sankariah’s house. That is, we’re talking to both him and Nallakannu together. The way the comrades of eight decades greet each other touches the emotions of the rest of us in the room, too.

Is there no bitterness, no sadness? They went their different ways when the Communist Party of India split into two some 60 years ago. It was not an amiable parting.“But we have worked together on many issues and struggles even after that,” says Nallakannu. “With the same attitude towards each other as from before.”“When the two of us meet,” says Sankariah, “we are still one party.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;How do they respond to the present-day rise in communal violence and hatred? Do they fear for the nation’s survival? A nation whose independence they helped achieve.“There were times during the freedom struggle, too, when things looked bleak,” says Nallakannu. “We were told you cannot win. You are up against the greatest empire in the world. Some of our families were warned to keep us away from the struggle. But we rose above all those warnings and threats. And fought anyway. That’s why we are here today.”There is also the need, both of them say, to build broad unity. To reach out and learn from others as in the past. “I think even an EMS [Namboodiripad] had a Gandhi photo in his room,” says RNK.How do the two of them remain so calm and sanguine about the state of politics that so scares millions among the rest of us? Nallakannu shrugs: “We’ve seen worse.”PostscriptOn Independence Day, 2022, The Last Heroes: Footsoldiers of Indian Freedom had already gone to press when the government of Tamil Nadu conferred the Thagaisal Thamizhar Award on RNK. This is Tamil Nadu’s top prize instituted in 2021 and given to an eminent personality who has contributed a great deal to the state and the Tamil community. It carries a cash prize of Rs. 10 lakhs, and it was handed over to RNK by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on the ramparts of Fort St. George.

R. Nallakannu’s fight for many forgotten freedoms

മറക്കപ്പെട്ടുപോയ പല സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യങ്ങൾക്കുംവേണ്ടിയുള്ള ആർ. നല്ലകണ്ണിന്റെ പോരാട്ടം

भुलाइल बिसराइल आजादी खातिर नल्लाकन्नु के लड़ाई

शोषितों की आज़ादी के लिए नल्लकन्नु का संघर्ष

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“It all begins with a single thread and ends with a single thread,” says Rekha Ben Vaghela with a faint smile. She is sitting at her handloom weaving a single ikat patolu in her house in Mota Timbla village of Gujarat. “In the beginning we wind the bobbin with a single thread and in the end, we transfer the now dyed thread onto the bobbin,” Rekha Ben explains the many processes of patola making that come before the bobbins for the weft thread are ready, and the warp thread is set on the loom.Many in the Vankarvas in this village in Surendranagar district where she lives are engaged in one or the other task related to making the famous silk sarees known as patolu . But Rekha Ben, in her 40s today, is the only Dalit woman patola maker in Limbdi taluka, weaving single and double ikat patola. (Read: The warp and the weft of Rekha Ben’s life ).The patola from Surendranagar are known as ‘zalawadi’ patola , often cheaper than those made in Patan. Originally known for its single ikat patola , vankars (weavers) in Zalawad now also weave double ikat ones. “In single ikat , the design is only on the weft. In double ikat, both the warp and the weft have a design,” says Rekha Ben, explaining the difference between the two kinds of patola.It is the design that complicates the process. Rekha Ben is trying to explain it one more time. “A single ikat patolu has 3,500 warp threads and 13,750 weft threads. While a double ikat one has 2,220 warp threads and 9,870 weft threads,” she says sliding the bobbin with the weft thread into the shuttle.

The sight of the bobbin brings the image of 55-year-old Ganga Ben Parmar in front of my eyes. “We take the hank of yarn on a big wooden spool first and then from there on to a bobbin with the help of a spinning wheel. You cannot wind the bobbin without the spinning wheel,” she had said while working on one at her home in Limbdi’s Ghagharetiya village.“Where are you lost?” Rekha Ben’s voice brings me back to our discussion of the patola threads, a complex process that she has been explaining to me for the nth time that day. “Write,” she commands fixing her eyes on my notebook. She stops weaving for a while, trying to ensure that I understand the process completely.I write down the steps process, quite intricate with more than a dozen steps, that can last over weeks and will involve many more workers beyond the weaver. The process that begins with the hank of silk yarn and finishes with the last thread going into the 252-inch long patola saree, can take six months of labour.“A single mistake at any step and you are sure to ruin the patolu,” she pronounces.

Picking up the threads of patola

ହାତରେ ପଟୋଲା ବୁଣିବା

படோலாவின் நூல்களை இணைப்போம்

پٹولا کے دھاگوں کی ریشمی دنیا

પડી પટોળે ભાત, આ મહેનતની

পাটোলা সুতোর জটিল পথে জীবনের খোঁজ

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“I know almost 450 bird calls.”It’s a critical skill for Micah Rai. As a photographer in the wild, capturing rare birds and animals on camera is a waiting game, and one in which recognising sounds can make all the difference.From winged creatures to furry mammals, Micah has shot roughly 300 different species over the years. He recalls one of the most difficult, a bird – Blyth’s Tragopan ( Tragopan blythii ), of which sightings are very rare.It was October 2020 and Micah had acquired a Sigma 150mm-600mm telephoto zoom lens. With this powerful lens he was determined to photograph the Tragopan. He tracked the calls of the bird, relentless in his pursuit. “ Kaafi din se avaaz toh sunayi de raha tha [I was hearing the call for many days].” For months, the exercise didn’t lead to any photographs.Finally, in May 2021, once again Micah was following the call of Blyth’s Tragopan through the dense jungles of Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh, when the elusive creature came into clear view. He was in position, armed with his Sigma 150mm-600mm telephoto zoom lens on his Nikon D7200. But his nervousness got the better of him. “I got a blurry shot. It was of no use,” he recalls.Two years later, near Bompu camp in West Kameng, the still elusive bird, the colour of bright rust with small white dots on its back, came into sight, partly obscured by leaves. This time Micah didn’t miss. In a burst of 30-40 shots, he managed to get 1-2 good photos. It was published for the first time on PARI,<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/arunachals-birds-canary-in-the-coalmine/"> Arunachal’s birds: canary in the coalmine .</a>

Micah is part of a team of locals who assist scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru in their study of the impact of climate change on birds in the eastern Himalayan mountains of West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh.“Folks like Micah are the very backbone of the work that we do in Eaglenest. Working in the field and collecting the kind of data that we need would have been impossible [without them],” says ornithologist Dr. Umesh Srinivasan.Micah’s passion for birds goes beyond the scientific. He retells a Nepali story about the Blessing Bird. “In the jungle, a man, haunted by a stepmother's cruelty, finds refuge and sustenance in wild bananas and undergoes a metamorphosis into a bird. This colourful nocturnal creature symbolises the enduring and mystical bond between humans and the natural world in Nepali tradition.” Micah says the bird is none other than the elusive Mountain Scops Owl, believed by many to embody the Blessing Bird. Its rarity is the mystical essence of the tale.While chasing birds in this forest, Micah and others have also had a few close encounters with four-legged creatures, specifically the world’s largest, tallest and heaviest bovine species, wild gaur ( Bos gaurus ), also called the Indian Bison.Micah and two friends had come to clear the road of debris after a night of rain. The trio saw the mighty bison a mere 20 metres away. “I gave a yell and the mithun [gaur] began charging towards us at full speed!” Micah laughs as he recounts the story of his friend madly scrambling up a tree while being chased by the gaur; he and his other friend managed to escape and dashed to safety.He says his favourite animal in the forests of Eaglenest is a medium-sized wild cat called the Asian Golden Cat ( Catopuma temminckii ), found in the forests of Eaglenest. He spotted the cat at twilight on his way back to Bompu camp. “I had a camera [Nikon D7200] and got the shot,” he says happily. “But I never saw it again.”

*****Micah was born in Dirang, West Kameng, and moved with his family to village Ramalingam in the same district. “Everyone calls me Micah Rai. Micah Rai is my name on Instagram and Facebook. In documents it’s ‘Shambu Rai’,” says the 29-year-old who left school after Class 5 because, “money was a problem and my younger siblings also had to study.”The next few years went by in a blur of hard work – road construction in Dirang and work as kitchen staff at Bompu camp in Eaglenest Sanctuary and also at Lama Camp – in the Singchung Bugun Village Community Reserve (SBVCR).In his mid-teens, Micah finally returned to Ramalingam. “I was at home with my parents and helping them in the fields.” His family is of Nepali origin and lease 4-5 bighas of land from the Bugun community on which they grow cabbage and potatoes, selling the harvest in Tezpur, Assam, a four-hour road journey.When ornithologist and Assistant Professor of Ecology at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, Dr. Umesh Srinivasan came to Ramalingam to study the effects of climate change on birds, he asked around for 2-3 young boys to work as field staff. Micah leapt at the chance to earn a steady income. In January 2011, 16-year-old Micah started work as a field staff with Srinivasan’s team.

He happily acknowledges that his real education started in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. “I recognise the calls of birds in West Kameng district the most [easily],” he says. His favourite bird is “the Sikkim Wedge-billed Babbler. It’s not much to see looks-wise but I love its style,” he adds, referring to the unique beak of the bird and its eyes ringed with white colouring. A rare creature, it is found only in a few places – here in Arunachal Pradesh, far-eastern Nepal, Sikkim and eastern Bhutan.“Recently I shot the White-rumped Shama [ Copsychus malabaricus ] at an elevation above 2,000 metres. This is a strange thing because the bird normally resides at an elevation of 900 metres and lower. Because of the heat, the bird is changing its location,” says Micah.Scientist Srinivasan says, “eastern Himalayas are the second most biodiverse region on the planet, and many of the species found here are highly sensitive to temperature. Climate change here therefore has the potential to threaten a significant fraction of earth's species.” He says that their work shows that resident birds staying at a particular elevation are now slowly shifting their ranges to higher elevations. Read: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/arunachals-birds-canary-in-the-coalmine/">Arunachal’s birds: canary in the coalmine .</a>As a fellow photographer interested in climate change, I watch in fascination as Micah swipes through his phone, showing me images of birds, he’s photographed over the years. He makes it looks easy, but my own experience here tells me that it takes hard work, dedication and unending patience to get the right visual.

*****The team’s campsite, located at Bompu camp, lies inside Eaglenest sanctuary, a hotspot for hardcore birders across the world. It’s a transient home made of wood meshes and tarpaulin wrapped tightly around a broken concrete structure. The research team is a mix of scientists, an intern, and field staff from West Kameng district. Micah is an integral part of this crew headed by Dr. Umesh Srinivasan.The wind whips around us as Micah and I stand outside the research hut. The tips of surrounding peaks peek out from under thick garlands of grey cloud. I am keen to hear him speak about his experiences of a changing climate.“If there is a lot of heat at low elevations, then it picks up fast in the mountain area. The heat here in the mountains is increasing. Because of climate change we also know that the monsoon is upside down,” he tells me. “Earlier, people knew the patterns of the weather. Older people remember February being a cold and cloudy month.” Now in February, untimely rains cause great problems for farmers and their crops.It’s hard to imagine the serious effects of climate change in the lush forests of Eaglenest sanctuary, surrounded by the trilling of birds, cocooned by towering alder, maple and oak trees. The sun rises early in this eastern edge of India and the staff have been awake since 3:30 a.m., hard at work under a bright blue sky. Large puffs of white cloud sail slowly by.Under Srinivasan’s guidance, Micah has learnt ‘mist netting’ – a process of catching birds by stretching very fine netting made of nylon or polyester between two bamboo poles fixed in the mud. Once caught, the birds are placed inside a pouch. Gently taking the bird out of the little green pouch, Micah hands the creature over to Srinivasan.

Working rapidly, the bird’s weight, wingspan, the length of its legs is measured in less than a minute. After being tagged with an identification ring on its leg the bird is released. This entire process, of catching the bird in the mist netting, bringing it to the makeshift table, taking measurements and then setting it free, takes about 15-20 minutes. The team goes through this exercise every 20 minutes to half an hour for at least eight hours, depending on the weather. And Micah’s been doing this for close to 13 years now.“When we first started catching the birds, it was difficult to pronounce names like White-spectacled Warbler ( Seicercus affinis ). It was difficult to say because we don’t have the habit of speaking in English. We had never heard these words,” says Micah.Sharpening his birding skills at Eaglenest Sanctuary gave Micah a chance to travel to neighbouring Meghalaya where he says he saw that swathes of forest had been chopped down. “We roamed around in Cherrapunji [in 2012] for 10 ten days and saw not even 20 species of birds. Then I realised that I wanted to work in Eaglenest because there were so many more species here. We had seen a lot more birds sitting in Bompu.”“ Camera ka interest 2012 se shuru hua [My interest in cameras started in 2012],” Micah says. He used to borrow the camera of visiting scientist, Nandini Velho: “The Green-tailed Sunbird ( Aethopyga nipalensis ) is a common bird. I started photographing it as practice.”A couple of years later, Micah started guiding and taking a few tourists on birding expeditions. In 2018, a group from Mumbai – BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society) arrived. He clicked photos of them when asked. Sensing his joy while shooting photos, one of the group members offered him a Nikon P9000. “Sir, I want to buy a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) model. I don’t want the camera you are giving me,” he recalls saying.With generous donations from four members of the same group, savings from his field work and bird guiding, “I collected 50,000 rupees and the price was 55,000. So, my boss [Umesh] said that he would contribute the balance.” In 2018, Micah finally bought his very first DSLR, a Nikon D7200 with an 18-55mm zoom lens.

“For 2-3 years with the small 18-55mm zoom lens I used to take photos of the flowers around the house.” Taking close-up shots of birds from a massive distance requires very long and powerful telephoto lenses. “After a few years I thought I should buy the 150-600mm sigma lens.” But using the lens turned out to be difficult for Micah. He couldn’t manage to figure out the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and ISO on the camera. “I clicked such bad pictures,” he recalls. It was Ram Alluri, a cinematographer and Micah’s good friend, who taught him the technicalities of using a DSLR camera. “He taught me how to use the settings and now I only use manual [settings],” he adds.But only shooting stunning photographs of birds wasn’t enough. The next step was learning how to edit images in the Photoshop software. In 2021, Micah sat with Siddharth Srinivasan, a Masters student, to learn how to edit images in Photoshop.Soon news of his skills as a photographer spread and he was asked to contribute photos for an article ‘Lockdown brings hardship to birder’s paradise in India’ for The Third Pole , a website dedicated to stories on the Himalayas. “They took seven of my photos [for use in that piece]. I got money for each and felt very pleased,” he says. His steadfast contribution to fieldwork also translated into Micah being a co-author on a number of scientific papers.Micah is a man of many talents. Apart from being a meticulous field staffer, passionate photographer, and bird guide, he is also a guitarist. Walking into the church in Chitre Basti (also known as Tsering Pam), I see Micah in his musician avatar. Surrounded by three swaying women, he strums his guitar gently, rehearsing a song for the wedding ceremony of his friend, the local pastor’s daughter. As his fingers move nimbly over the guitar strings, I’m reminded of their deftness while gently extricating birds from the gossamer-like mist netting in the forest.All of those he measured, tagged, and then released in the past four days – harbingers of an unfolding climate crisis – those birds have flown.

Birds in West Kameng: Micah has them in focus

വെസ്റ്റ് കാമെംഗിലെ പക്ഷികൾ; മിക്കയുടെ കണ്ണിലൂടെ

ಪಶ್ಚಿಮ ಕಾಮೆಂಗ್:‌ ಮೀಕಾ ಎನ್ನುವ ಹಕ್ಕಿ ತಜ್ಞ

वेस्ट कमेंग के पंछियों को तस्वीरों में उतारते मीका

મિકાના કેમેરાના મનોકાશમાં ઊડતાં પશ્ચિમ કમેંગના પક્ષીઓ

পশ্চিম কামেং জিলাৰ চৰাইবোৰত মিকা ৰাইৰ দৃষ্টি 

चिरई-चिरगुन उपर मीका के ‘नजर’

वेस्ट कमेंग: मीका के कैमरा आ उनकर चिरई प्रेम

মিকা রাইয়ের ক্যামেরায় ধরা দেয় যত বিরল পাখি

West Kameng

eng-birds-mob.png

01-IMG_5268-AG-They_dont_expect_much_from_my_education_because_I_am_a_girl.jpg

“My mother and I fought about it just last
night,” says 21-year-old Asha Bassi. “For the past three and a half years,” she
explains, “my parents have been asking me to quit my education and get
married”. 



A final year student at Savitri Jyotirao
Samajkarya Mahavidyalaya in Yavatmal city, Asha is pursuing her Bachelor’s
Degree in Social Work. She is among the first in her family to receive formal
education. “Girls who marry early are praised,” she says, adding, “But I want
to educate myself, it is the only way I can be free.” 
 Asha is from Jewali village of Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district and belongs
to the Mathura Labhan community which has been listed as a De-notified Tribe
(Vimukta Jati) in the state. Her parents are farmers and grow soya, cotton,
wheat and millets on the land they own in Jewali. 
 
The family depends on agriculture to raise their four children – three
daughters and a son. Asha is the eldest child and lives with her maternal uncle
and aunt in Yavatmal city while she earns her Bachelor’s Degree. 
  
Asha’s parents enrolled her to a zilla
parishad (ZP) school near their house at the age of 7 at the insistence of
a few local teachers. She studied there till Class 3, after which she moved to
Yavatmal city 112 kms away from Jewali. There she studied in a school
affiliated to the Maharashtra State Board and eventually enrolled in a nearby
college.

“Girls in our community usually study till
Class 7, after which they are gradually made to drop out of schools. Very few
attend college,” says Asha. Even her younger sister was married three
years ago. 
 “Our community is conservative,” Asha says.
The societal fear that girls might marry for love or people of other castes
often adds to the pressure girls face for marriage. “If a girl elopes with her
partner, her friends are pulled out of school as well,” Asha explains. “I don’t
know of any girl in my community who has married outside her caste.” 
 
Asha says that the pressure to get married heightened during the covid-19
pandemic during which she had moved back home to Jewali village. She even met a
few prospective men for marriage. “During the pandemic, more than 30 girls in
my locality who are less than 21 years of age were married off,” says Asha. 



Since girls are not encouraged to pursue
higher education in Jewali, education is seldom deemed a valid reason for
delaying marriage. “Since my younger sister is married and I am not, people
look at me with suspicion,” Asha adds. 
 “Whatever I do [for my education], I do it all
by myself,” Asha says, her disappointment evident. Since she is the first in
her family to pursue higher education, she does not receive much guidance from
them. Her father, Balsing Bassi, studied till Class 11 and her mother Vimal
studied till Class 5. “Even now, they don’t expect much from my education
because I am a girl,” says Asha, adding that seeking education has become “lotaycha kaam” for her – work that
involves a lot of physical and mental struggle. 
 “No one at home was involved in my education,”
says Asha. “I wish my mother had told me, “Tu
kar, me tuzya pathishi ahe” [You study, I have your back].” But Asha says
that her mother is the strongest critic of her seeking an education.

The nearest college to Jewali is in Bittargaon
village 12 kms away. “Parents are scared of their daughter’s safety if they
travel alone to and from school. So, girls usually travel in a group,” says
Asha, highlighting how robust educational infrastructure aids education for
girls. “If one girl’s discontinues school, other parents also ask their
daughter to drop out as companions to travel become scarce.” 
 
Asha recalls how the move to Yavatmal city for school was not an easy one. She
spoke the Mathura Labhan dialect which was distinct from the Marathi used as
the medium of instruction in her school. This made participating in class or in
school events difficult. “My classmates used to ridicule my dialect,” Asha
says, adding, “I feared they would laugh at me if I spoke in my dialect in
class”. 
 The hesitation inhibited Asha’s progress in
school. “Till Class 6, I could only write Marathi alphabets and not full
sentences. I could not even read basic words like kutra [dog] and manjar
[cat] till Class 5”.



But all her doubts faded away when she scored
79 per cent in her Maharashtra State Board Senior Secondary School Certificate
(SSC) Examination for Class 10 and managed to confidently persuade her maternal
uncle to let her study further. In Class 12, she scored 63 per cent. 



Asha’s academic achievements, still matter
little to those around her – “My parents can never proudly say that their
daughter is pursuing her graduation degree in the city because it is not a
worthy pursuit in our society.” 



The trend of getting married early saps all
enthusiasm for education from girls. “If it is certain that they will get
married off at 16 years of age, why will girls work hard to get an education?”
Asha asks. Yet, her ambitions remain fuelled. Secure in her awareness of the
merits of her education, she says, “The reason I can dream of a secure future
is only because of education”.

Asha enjoys reading. Some of her favourite
books are Hamrasta Nakartana by
Sarita Awhad and Findri by Sunita
Barde, which are texts gleaning from the lives of marginalised women. She wants
to pursue a Master’s degree in women studies and has already been selected as a
Young India Fellow at Ashoka University, Sonipat.



Moving to Yavatmal city greatly bolstered
Asha’s confidence. “Even though my relatives deem a degree in Social Work
inferior, it has been very rewarding for me,” she says. In Jewali, the
households of those belonging to Asha&#39;s Mathura Labhan community are collectively called taande. These are usually located
away from the main settlements. “This isolation,” says Asha, “makes it difficult for us to stay
connected with modern, progressive thought.” Her teachers in college mentored
her with diligence, especially Professor Ghanshyam Darane who taught Marathi.

“It is believed that women are simply not capable of achieving anything,” says Asha, more angry than sad. “I want to change that,” she says, adding, “Once I
become something big, I want to come back to my village and bring about
progressive change for girls. I do not want to run away.” 
 
But first, she has to tackle the upcoming marriage season during which the
pressure to marry will only increase. Asha says, “I am going to
require a lot of strength to hold up”.

'They don’t expect much from my education because I am a girl'

'હું ભણીગણીને કંઈક બનું એવી ખાસ કોઈ અપેક્ષા તેઓ રાખતા નથી કારણ કે હું છોકરી છું'

'ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਮੇਰੀ ਪੜ੍ਹਾਈ ਤੋਂ ਬਹੁਤੀ ਉਮੀਦ ਨਹੀਂ ਕਿਉਂਕਿ ਮੈਂ ਇੱਕ ਔਰਤ ਹਾਂ'

‘பெண் என்பதால் என் கல்வியை அவர்கள் பொருட்படுத்தவில்லை’

‘പെൺകുട്ടിയായതിനാൽ എന്റെ വിദ്യാഭ്യാസത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് അവർക്ക് വലിയ പ്രതീക്ഷയൊന്നുമില്ല‘

ʼನಾನು ಹೆಣ್ಣಾಗಿರುವುದರಿಂದ ಅವರು ನನ್ನ ಶಿಕ್ಷಣದಿಂದ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನದನ್ನು ನಿರೀಕ್ಷಿಸುವುದಿಲ್ಲʼ

’لڑکی ہوں، اس لیے میرا پڑھنا انہیں اچھا نہیں لگتا‘

‘ସେମାନେ ମୋ ପାଠପଢ଼ାରୁ ବେଶି କିଛି ଆଶା କରନ୍ତିନି, କାରଣ ମୁଁ ଜଣେ ଝିଅ’

‘त्यांना माझ्या शिक्षणाकडून फारशा अपेक्षा नाहीत कारण मी मुलगी आहे’

‘আমি মেয়ে বলে ওরা আমার লেখাপড়া থেকে বেশি কিছু আশা করে না’

‘लड़की होने के चलते मेरा पढ़ना किसी को रास नहीं आता!’

नोनी होय सेती पढ़ई-लिखई ले बेदखल

‘बेटी के पढ़ाई-लिखाई के कवनो कीमत ना होखे’

‘মই ছোৱালী বাবে সিহঁতে মোৰ পৰা বেছি আশা নকৰে’

01-IMG_3447-SJ-A_lifetime_of_handcrafting_morchangs_in_Jaisalmer.jpg

For as long as he could
remember, Mohanlal Lohar
has been fascinated with the melody of a hammer pounding away. Listening to the
rhythmic clanging, he grew up knowing that crafting them would become a
lifelong passion.



Mohanlal was born in a home of lohars (blacksmiths) in Nand village of Rajasthan’s Barmer district. He
started when he was eight, assisting his father, the late Bhavraram Lohar, by
handing him hammers and other tools. “I never went to school and kept playing
with these pieces of equipment,” he says. 



The family belongs to the Gaduliya Lohar community,
listed as an Other Backward Class in Rajasthan, and speak Marwari and Hindi.
Mohanlal was a teenager when he came to Jaisalmer five decades ago in the early
1980s looking for more work. Since then, he has made morchangs from a variety
of materials: aluminum, silver, steel and even brass. 



“By merely touching a piece
of loha [iron], I can tell if it
will sound good or not,” says Mohanlal who has spent over 20,000 hours
hammering red-hot iron to shape musical morchangs, a percussion instrument
heard across Jaisalmer’s sand dunes. 



“It is tough to make a
morchang,” says the 65-year-old and says he can’t recall how many morchangs
he’s made to date: “ginti se bahar hain woh [there
is no count to it].” 



A morchang (also spelt as morsing) is roughly 10
inches long and has a metal horseshoe-shaped ring with two parallel forks.
Between them is a metal tongue, known as a trigger that is fixed on one end.
The musician grips it with their front teeth and breathes in and out through
it. With one hand, the musician moves the morchang’s tongue, producing musical
notes; the other hand helps keep the grip on the iron rim.

The instrument is at least 1,500
years old, and “while grazing livestock, shepherds would play the morchang,”
says Mohanlal. The music and the instrument traveled with the shepherds, and as
they traversed longer distances playing it, its fame spread too and it gained
popularity across Rajasthan, especially in Jaisalmer and Jodhpur districts.



Now in his sixties, it takes
Mohanlal about eight hours to make a morchang while earlier he could easily
make two a day. “I only make one morchang a day because I don’t want to
compromise on quality,” he says and adds, “my
morchangs are world famous now.” He has also
mastered the skill of fashioning miniature morchang lockets, a favourite among
tourists. 



Identifying the right kind
of loha (iron) is critical
as “not every loha can make
a good morchang,” he says. It took him over a decade to perfect the skill of
selecting the finest iron. He buys iron from Jaisalmer – a kilo costs
around Rs. 100; a single morchang weighs no more than 150 grams, and musicians
prefer lightweight ones. 



Mohanlal’s family continues
to use a traditional blacksmith forge known as dhaman in
Marwari. “You won’t find this kind of forge in all of Jaisalmer city,” he says.
“It is at least 100 years old and works perfectly.”

He uses two enclosures, made of
goat’s skin to pump the air. The wood through which the air passes is made
of rohida tree (Tecomella undulata). The air has to be pumped continuously for at
least three hours as the iron is heated simultaneously. It’s an arduous task.
Physically pumping the air causes severe pain in the shoulders and back;
inadequate ventilation leads to breathlessness and excessive sweating. 



Gigidevi, Mohanlal&#39;s wife, often helped
him with the pumping but stopped due to her advancing age. “This is the only
task in the entire morchang-making process that women perform. Everything else
has traditionally been done by men,” says 60-year-old Gigidevi. Their
sons Ranmal and Harishankar – sixth
generation lohars – also make
morchangs.



As the pumping commences,
Mohanlal picks up the red-hot iron using a sandasi (blacksmith’s
tong) and positions it onto an elevated iron surface – aaran. He swiftly places the hammer in his right hand,
while carefully holding the iron piece with his left. Another lohar uses a five-kilogram hammer to
pound the iron piece, and Mohanlal joins him as they both hammer away.  



The rhythmic hammering done
by each lohar striking after the
other, “sounds like the tunes produced by a dholaki and made me
fall in love with making morchangs,” says Mohanlal.

This ‘music’ goes on for around
three hours and causes his hands to swell. The artisan must lift the hammer
over 10,000 times in three hours, and a tiny slip can injure the fingers. “It
has even broken my nails in the past. Injuries are common in this kind of
work,” says Mohanlal, laughing off the pain. Besides injuries, burns to the
skin are common too. “Many people have started using machines for hammering,
but we do it using our bare hands even today,” points out Mohanlal’s elder son,
Ranmal. 



After hammering comes the most
difficult part of crafting a morchang – the careful shaping of the hot iron.
This process takes another two hours during which he carves the intricate
designs. The instrument is then left to cool for an hour or two before filing
for two hours to smoothen the surface. “Filing creates magic as it makes the
morchang as smooth as a mirror,” says Ranmal.



Every month, Mohanlal’s
family receives orders for at least 10 morchangs which sell for Rs. 1,200 to
Rs. 1,500 a piece. During winters, when tourists flock in, that number often
doubles. “Many tourists place orders through email as well,” shares Ranmal.
Orders pour in from France, Germany, Japan, the USA, Australia, Italy, and
several other countries. Mohanlal and his sons also travel to various cultural
festivals across Rajasthan, selling as well as performing.

While Mohanlal is grateful that
his sons have picked up the art, the number of artisans who can craft a
morchang by hand in Jaisalmer is fast declining. “People don’t want to pay
even a thousand rupees for this [good] quality morchang,” he says. Crafting
morchangs requires a lot of patience and hard work, something that not many are
willing to undertake. “One has to work an entire day, and then they earn only
300 to 400 rupees if they manage to find a buyer. This is not sustainable,” he
says. 



Many lohars complain that the smoke impairs their sight. “The forge
produces a lot of smoke, which often goes into the eyes and nose, causing
coughing,” says Ranmal. “We have to sit near the forge in scorching
temperatures, which feels suffocating.” On hearing this Mohanlal chides his son
saying, “if you pay attention to injuries, how will you learn?” 



Besides morchangs, Mohanlal has
taught himself to craft alghoza (a paired
woodwind musical instrument also known as a double flute), shehnai, murli, sarangi,
harmonium and flute. “I love playing musical instruments and so I keep learning
to make these instruments.” He has kept most of them carefully locked in a
metallic box. Yeh mera khajana hain [this is my
treasure],” he says, smiling.



This
story is part of a series on rural artisans by Sanket Jain, and is supported by
the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation.

A lifetime of handcrafting morchangs

जैसलमेरचे मोहनलाल आणि त्यांचे मोरचांग

ریت کے ٹیلوں میں گونجتی مورچنگ کی آواز

മോർചാങ്കുകൾ മെനഞ്ഞ് ഒരു ജീവിതകാലം

ମୋର୍ଚାଙ୍ଗ ହସ୍ତଶିଳ୍ପରେ ସାରା ଜୀବନ

उनकर करेजा में धड़केला मोरचंग

দুহাতেৰে মৰ্চাং সাজি সাজি কটোৱা জীৱনটো

మోర్చంగ్‌ల తయారీలో ఒక జీవితకాలం…

মোরচাং গড়েই সারাজীবন কেটে গেল

सरी जिनगी हाथ ले मोरचंग गढ़त

ਹੱਥੀਂ ਬਣੇ ਮੋਰਚੰਗ ਦੀ ਕਹਾਣੀ

राजस्थान: रेत के टीलों में गूंजती मोरचंग की आवाज़

ಮೋರ್ಚಾಂಗ್‌ ತಯಾರಿಕೆಯ ಐವತ್ತು ವರ್ಷಗಳು

પોતાના હાથોથી મોરચંગ બનાવવામાં વિતાવી આખી જીંદગી

மோர்ச்சாங்குகள் செய்யக் கழியும் ஆயுள்

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“The
first day, Majidan smacked my hand like this,” says 65-year-old Qarsaed Begum,
playfully reenacting the moment. Sitting next to her, Majidan Begum, still
amused at the old story, defends her actions immediately. “Qarsaed didn’t know
how to work with the threads initially. I smacked her only once,” she says, and
adds, “then she quickly learned.”

In Ghanda Bana, a village in Punjab’s Bathinda district,
the two elderly women, Majidan and Qarsaed are well known for the detailed and
vibrant dhurries [rugs] they weave
from cotton, jute, and even old clothes.

“I learned how to weave
dhurries from Majidan at the age of 35,” says Qarsaed. “Since then, we have
been weaving dhurries together,” says
71-year-old Majidan. “It is not just one person’s job, but a task for two.”

The duo,
related to each other by marriage to two brothers, refer to themselves as
sisters and family members. “We feel no different than real sisters,” says
Qarsaed. Majidan quickly adds, “even though our natures are completely
opposite.&quot; To which Qarsaed responds swiftly saying, “she is upfront.
However, I stay quiet.”

Despite
the hours they spend weaving dhurries,
Majidan and Qarsaed also work as domestic helpers for a few thousand rupees a
month so they can support their family. Both are physically demanding jobs,
especially for women at their age.

On the
humid morning of Eid, Majidan navigates the narrow lanes of Ghanda Bana towards
Qarsaed&#39;s home. &quot;Every household in this village would welcome me with
open doors,&quot; she says proudly. &quot;That&#39;s how much work I&#39;ve done over
the years.&quot;

Their reputation extends beyond the village too. People
from distant places send messengers to check with Majidan if the duo can make
rugs. “But nearby villages or towns like Phul, Dhapali, and Rampura Phul, who know me
well for weaving dhurries, come
directly to my house,” Majidan says.

When PARI met them a few months ago (April 2024), the two
artisans were weaving a phulkari dhurrie,
a flower-embroidered rug for a Ghanda Bana resident. The family wanted to
present the rug to their daughter who was getting married soon.  “The dhurrie
is for her daaj [trousseau],” Majidan
said. 

The flowers were created using
combinations of two different coloured threads provided by the customer.
“When
weaving a flower pattern, we incorporate various colours of weft threads in
between,” explains Majidan, lifting 10 white warp (vertical) threads to pass a
yellow weft (horizontal) thread, then repeating the process for a blue one.
Leaving a gap, she continues, this time making a green and black flower. 

“Once the flowers are complete, we will weave about one
foot of the dhurrie using only red
weft threads,” Majidan says. There is no tape to measure the fabric, instead
Majidan uses her hands. It’s something she and Qarsaed have done since the
beginning as neither ever went to school. 


As the
two push the weft threads into place using hathas
[comb reeds], Majidan remarks again, “the design is all in my head.” Among the dhurries she has woven so far, she’s
proud of the one with a peacock and
another with 12 pariyaans [fairies].
These were given to both her daughters for their daaj.

In
Majidan’s pucca home, their workstation
reflects careful attention to detail. She shares the room where they work with
her 10-year-old grandson, Imran Khan. The 14 x 14-foot space is dominated by a
10-foot-long metal frame known locally as an &#39;adda&#39; and used for weaving tapestry. The rest of the room has
multiple charpais (string cots), some
leaning against the wall and one beside the frame; a large steel trunk filled
with clothes and belongings lies to the side. A single light bulb illuminates
the room, but Majidan and Qarsaed rely on the sunlight that enters through the
door for essential lighting. 

They start by winding the warp—vertical threads—across a
nearly 10-foot metal frame. “Winding the warp threads is the most difficult
task in weaving dhurries,” remarks
Majidan. The tightly wound warp is stretched lengthwise around a metal beam.

 The two weavers sit on a plank placed above
the metal frame that supports the tapestry they will create. The process starts
with manipulating the heddle – a bar used for faster and simpler weaving – to
open and close the shed of the loom. The shed is what separates the warp
threads from each other. This creates the patterns the rug will eventually take
on. 



Alternating with each other, the two craftswomen pass
the horizontal weft threads [bana] through
the warp threads (tana) using a
wooden stick, creating intricate designs. Majidan winds the warp to create
various motifs that she says are “based on an idea that exists in her head.”
There is no pattern or stencil she is referencing to replicate the design.

Hard as it seems, the job is much easier now.  “Before this we used to hammer four big iron kile [nails] in the ground in each of
the four corners. We would place wooden beams on them creating a frame and then
wind warp around them to weave,” Qarsaed says. “That adda was immovable unlike this one,&quot; says Majidan. So when
they want a change of setting, “we drag it into the courtyard.” 



The two
women don’t receive much financial help from their families. Majidan&#39;s youngest
son, Riyasat Ali, was a truck driver but now works in a cow shelter for Rs. 500
a day. Her eldest son is a local reporter in Barnala.  Two of Qarsaed’s sons work as welders, while her third son is a daily wage labourer.

Majidan began weaving much earlier than Qarsaed. The
disciplinary tactics inflicted on her were not too different, though. “My parjaayi [sister-in-law] smacked me on my tui [buttocks] to teach me,” Majidan says, speaking of her other
sister-in-law, who taught her how to weave.

“Even
though I was a short-tempered girl, I remained silent because I was eager to
learn.”  And she did, in less than a
month “despite my initial frustration and tears.”



Majidan’s assertiveness showed when after her father’s
passing, her mother became the sole earning member. The 14-year-old Majidan
insisted on helping her mother, despite initial reluctance. “Bebe [mother] would gently refuse,
saying [I can’t because] ‘I am a girl’,” Majidan recalls. “But I persisted,
questioning why being a girl should stop me from helping the family.”

The family was profoundly
impacted by the Partition of India – her maternal grandparents’ family lived in
Pakistan, a fact that still fills Majidan with longing. When she visited them
in the 1980s, she went with gifts – two hand-woven dhurries which “they really
liked,” she says.

Despite the hours of labour, the women earn only Rs. 250 each for a single dhurrie. “We usually charge
1,100 rupees for weaving a dhurrie.
If the customer provides the soot
[yarn thread], we charge only 500 rupees for our labour,” Majidan explains.
“When I started, an entire dhurrie
was woven for 20 rupees. Now, we barely make enough,” Majidan recalls. “A litre
of milk costs 60 rupees in the village. Imagine my expenses in a month,”
Qarsaed laments.

Majidan and Qarsaed raised their children with great
difficulty as both their husbands were unemployed. “I worked as a domestic help
for Jat Sikh families, who gave me essentials to take home. I fed my children
with that,” Qarsaed adds. Majidan, who lives with her youngest son and his
family, and Qarsaed, who lives with her family of eight, often think about
those hard times.

Up until
three years ago, they would pick cotton during the busy cotton harvesting
season between September and October. They would spin this into yarn, which
supplemented their earnings, making Rs 200 a day
for picking 40 kilos of cotton. &quot;Nowadays, most
farmers sow paddy instead,&quot; Majidan remarks. This shift has significantly
impacted their lives. Government records
<a href="https://www.texmin.nic.in/sites/default/files/Annexure-IV-%20Area-Prod-Yield-state-wise%20year%20wise.pdf">show</a> a sharp
decline in cotton cultivation in Punjab, dropping from 420,000 hectares in
2014-15 to 240,000 hectares in 2022-23. 



In March, Majidan reluctantly retired her charkha for spinning thread and yarn; it
lies abandoned in a shed. The demand for dhurries
has also fallen sharply — they once crafted 10 to 12 a month, now they manage
only two. Their sole steady income is a monthly widow pension of Rs. 1,500 from
the state government.

After
over an hour of work, Qarsaed and Majidan take a short break and stretch their
legs. Qarsaed mentions her aching back, and Majidan presses her knees and says,
&quot;I&#39;m finding it difficult to walk today. My joints are hurting.&quot; Both
also complain of weakening eyesight.

“Banda ban ke kaam
kita hai [I have worked like a man], and I continue to do so at my age,”
Majidan adds, as she manages this household solely on her modest earnings.

Despite her age and the aches that accompany it, Majidan
has to supplement her pension and the money she gets from crafting dhurries. Every day at 7 am, she walks a
few kilometers to cook for a family, earning Rs. 2,000 a month. She and Qarsaed
also work as domestic helpers, earning Rs. 70 per hour. 

Despite their long days, they find time to weave dhurries. “If we weave every day, we can
finish a dhurrie in a week,” Qarsaed
says.

Majidan
considers quitting weaving. “Maybe after finishing this one and one more, I’ll
stop. Sitting for long hours has become difficult. It pains me here,” she says,
revealing stitches from last year&#39;s gallbladder surgery. “Whatever years are
left – one or two perhaps – I intend to live them well.”



The next day, however, any thought of retirement seems
forgotten.  A frail woman, in her early
eighties Balbir Kaur arrives with an order for a dhurrie from another village. “Mai
[mother], ask the family if they want the dhurrie
to use in their home or for their daughter’s trousseau,” Majidan instructs the
old woman, handing her a hundred rupees. This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).

The dhurrie weavers of Ghanda Bana

बठिंडा के दरी बुनेइय्या महतारी

கண்டா பாணாவின் கம்பள விரிப்பு நெசவாளர்கள்

ഘണ്ട ബാനയിലെ ദരി നെയ്ത്തുകാർ

ఘందా బానాలో దరీ నేతకు ప్రసిద్ధి చెందిన మహిళలు

دری بنانے میں ماہر بھٹنڈا کی مجیدن اور قرسید

ଘଣ୍ଡା ବନାର ଦରି ବୁଣାକାର

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A paved side road forking off the Limbdi highway
stretches right up to the village of Mota Timbla, about 10-12 kilometres away. At
the very edge of the village is Vankarvas, a space designated for the homes of
the Dalit weaver communities residing here. Khat-khat…khat-khat, the rhythmic
sounds of shuttle looms echo in the narrow lanes between old-style, tiled-roof houses
and a few thatched ones, an occasional human voice or two interrupting the periodic
beat of the handloom. Listen closely, and you will even hear the sound of
labour. Tune in a bit more, and you’ll catch what seems a faint sound of regret
weaving an intricate pattern within the louder rap-trap-rap, like a prelude to
the story of Rekha Ben Vaghela. 

&quot;I had hardly been three months in Class 8.
I was living in a hostel in Limbdi and had come home after the first school
exam. That is when mother said that I was not going to study any further. Gopal
Bhai, my elder brother, needed help. He had already dropped out before
graduation to earn a living. Our family never had the money to support [the
education of] my two brothers. That is how I started patola work.” Rekha Ben’s words are straightforward but
sharp, like all things honed by poverty. Now in her 40s, she is the master
weaver of Mota Timbla in Gujarat’s Surendranagar district.

“My husband was addicted to alcohol, gambling, paan-masala,
tobacco,” she says, pulling in another thread of the story of her life after
marriage. A rather unhappy one. Often, she would leave her husband and return
to her parents’ home, but would be coaxed into returning to him. She was miserable. Yet, she bore it all. “He was not a man of good character,” she says. 

“He used to beat me up sometimes, even during
my pregnancy,” she says. You can hear the wounds still afresh in her voice. “I
found out about his affair after my daughter was born. I continued like that
for a year. That is when Gopal Bhai died in an accident [in 2010]. All his patola
work was pending. Gopal Bhai owed money to the trader who had got him the
material. So, I stayed back [in my parents’ house] for the next five months and
completed all his work. After that, my husband came to pick me up,” she says. 

A few more years went
in fooling herself into thinking she was happy, in caring for the young one, in
enduring the pain within. “Finally, when my daughter was four and a half years
old, I could not bear the torture anymore and just left,” says Rekha Ben. The patola
weaving skill she had acquired after leaving school came to her aid when she left
her marital home. It smoothed the sharp, rough edges left by poverty, and gave
her a new start in life. A strong one.

Before long, Rekha Ben became the only woman patola
weaver in the villages of Limbdi, the one who could align the warp and weft threads
with the skill and ease of an expert.

“In the beginning I used to go to the
neighbour’s house opposite ours for dandi work. I must have taken a
month to learn,” Rekha Ben says. As she speaks, she is adjusting the shuttle, rubbing
her rough cheeks weathered by experience, and resting her elbows on the loom.
She carefully aligns the patterns on the threads along the warp (longitudinal)
and the weft (transverse). 

Replacing the empty spindle in the shuttle with
a new one, she presses the two pedals of the handloom that lift the desired
layers in the warp yarn, allowing the shuttle to pass through. One hand pulls
the lever controlling the movement of the weft thread, another quickly pulls
the beater to keep the weft yarn in place. Rekha Ben single-handedly weaves the
patolu, her eyes on the loom, her mind foreseeing the pattern; she talks
about her life and craft in the same breath. 

Traditionally, there are at least two people
involved in the weaving of a patolu. “The one who does the dandi
work, the helper, sits on the left, the weaver is on the right,” she explains. Dandi
work involves aligning the pre-dyed threads of warp or weft or both,
depending on the type of patolu that is being woven.

The weaving process is intensive when one looks
at the time and the labour spent on each piece. Rekha Ben, though, with her
skill and dexterity, makes everything look effortless. It’s as if the entire
complex process of weaving is nothing but a magical dream in her eyes that
unfolds at her fingertips. 

“In single ikat, the design is only on
the weft. In double ikat, both the warp and the weft have a design,” she
explains the difference between the two kinds of patola.

It is the design that
differentiates the two types. Patola from Jhalawad are of the single ikat
type, made from fine silk from Bengaluru, while those from Patan are double ikat,
using a thicker silk from Assam, Dhaka, or even, weavers here claim, from
England.

The complex process of tying and dying known
as ikat has been practised by weavers across many parts of
India, like in Telangana or Odisha. However, what makes the patola from
Gujarat unique, apart from its geographical location, are its intricate and
clear designs, and the vivid colours of the silk. The final products are
expensive and have a history of royal patronage.

Padi patole bhaat, faate pan feete nahi.
The design of the patola, the popular Gujarati saying goes, never fades,
not even when it frays. What goes into the patola design is another
complex story. For another time. 

Rekha Ben’s time after she left her husband’s
house was anything but easy. It had been a long while since she had given up
weaving. Getting back to it was tough. “I spoke to two or three people, but no
one trusted me with work,” she says.“Jayanti Bhai of Somasar gave me six sarees
to weave for a fixed wage. But I was getting back to it after a gap of four
years, and the finish was not as good as expected. He found my work raw – and never
gave me another chance. He always had some excuse,” Rekha Ben says, weaving in
a sigh. I wonder if that would disturb the precise alignment of the warp
threads, crucial for the overall pattern.

Days passed without work, in a ‘to-ask-or-not-to-ask’
dilemma.  The shades of poverty ripened. When
it came to work, Rekha Ben didn’t mind begging, but pride came in the way of
asking for money. “I spoke to Manubhai Rathod, my fui’s son [father’s sister’s
son]. He gave some work. There was some improvement. He liked it. I worked for
more than a year and a half as a labourer, weaving for a wage. That was single ikat,
and I used to get 700 rupees for a patola saree,” recalls Rekha Ben.
“When my sister-in-law [Gopal Bhai’s wife] and I worked together, it took us
three days to weave one.” That’s well over ten hours of labour in weaving alone
on each of those days. More hours are spent on other tasks.

The life of constant strife, though, gave her
some courage. “I thought,” she says, taking a deep breath, “that it would be
good to be on my own and work on my own to better our financial situation. I
bought the raw material, and got the loom prepared from outside. Once the loom
was ready, I brought the warps home and started weaving.&quot;

“Not for any orders,”
she adds with a proud smile. “I started weaving my own patola. And I even
sold them from home. Slowly, I increased the production.” That was one
extraordinary feat – a move from vulnerability to independence. There was only
one niggling regret she had – her lack of knowledge and command over the double
ikat weave.

“Finally, I took training for that from my
elder paternal uncle for a month and a half,” she says. Her daughter was still
young, in Class 4, she had no ties with her in-laws’ family, and the financial stress
on her was still great. But Rekha Ben was determined. “I put all my savings
into buying raw material, silk yarn. I prepared the yarn with designs for
sixteen patola on my own,” she says. 

“You need a minimum of three people to do this
job and I was all alone. I was confused. Pasi vicharyu je karvanu chhe e
maraj karvaanu se. Man makkam kari lidhu pasi. [But then I told myself that
there is only me for all that needs to be done. I made up my mind].”  And yet, when she sometimes needed help,
people in the community came forward to lend a hand: to stretch the now coloured
threads of warp between two poles in the street to give it a coat of starch and
strength; to roll the starched warp threads on the beam; to fix the beam on the
loom; to connect the yarn threads on the beam through the phen (heddles)
in the right order (a process known as slaying) and set the handloom ready for
weaving. 

Giving the threads a coat of starch is a tricky
business. Carelessly leaving extra flour on the yarn will attract rats and
lizards to the loom.

“Double ikat was not easy. I made mistakes.
Like errors of alignment in the weft and warp threads. I even had to call
people from outside to teach me. No one will come when you call them once. I
had to keep going and requesting them four or five times. But then it all got set!”
Her smile has a ring of satisfaction mixed with uncertainty, fear, confusion, courage,
and persistence. ‘It all got set’ meant the warp threads were well aligned with
the weft threads, ensuring the flawless pattern on the fabric without which the
patolu will prove to be more expensive for the weaver than the buyer. 

The intricate double ikat patola once came
exclusively from Patan. “The weavers in Patan get their silk from England, we
get it from Bengaluru. Many traders buy their patola from Rajkot or
Surendranagar and then put the Patan stamp on it,” Vikram Parmar, 58, another
weaver from the village speaks from his experience. 

“What they buy from
us for fifty, sixty, seventy thousand rupees, they sell at a much higher price.
They too weave but they find this cheaper,” says Vikram. More than one weaver
in the village tells this story of the cheaper patola of Jhalawad
bearing a Patan stamp, getting sold for lakhs of rupees in the big cities. This
has been going on for a long time now.

About forty years ago, 70-year-old Hameer Bhai,
from an earlier generation than Rekha Ben’s, brought patola weaving to
Limbdi taluka. 

“Arjan Bhai got me to Rajkot from Bhayavadar,” Hameer
Bhai recalls his journey to Katariya village in Limbdi. “For about a month or
two I was shifted from one factory to another. Once the owner asked me: ‘cheva
so? [what caste are you?]’ and I said ‘Vankar.’ That was it. He said
‘kal thi no aavata, tamara bhegu pani nath pivu’ [Don’t come from
tomorrow; I don’t want to accept even water from you.]’  After that, Mohan Bhai Makwana once asked if I
would like to learn making patola, and I started at five rupees a day.
For six months I learned how to design, and the next six months I learned to
weave,” he says. He returned to Katariya after that and continued weaving, and
passed on the skill to many others. 

“I have been weaving for the last fifty years,”
says Punja Bhai Vaghela, another weaver. “I must have been in Class 3 when I
started weaving. I used to work with khadi first. Patola came
later. My uncle taught me patola weaving. Since then, I have been doing this
work. All single ikat, seven to eight-thousand-rupee ones. We, husband and
wife,” he points to his spouse Jasu Ben, “worked for Praveen Bhai in
Surendranagar, and now for the last six or seven months we work for Rekha Ben.”

“If we sit by her side [helping with thread
alignment] at the loom, we get 200 rupees a day. If we do a few, small design-related
jobs, we may get 60 or 70 rupees. My daughter Urmila goes to Rekha Ben’s house
for yarn colouring work. She gets a daily wage of 200 rupees. Everything adds
up and we manage,” says Jasu Ben. 

“These loom-shoom and
all, belong to Rekha Ben,” Punja Bhai adds, stroking the teakwood frame. The
cost of the loom alone could be as high as Rs. 35-40,000. “All we have is
our labour. Everything put together, we make about twelve thousand rupees a
month,” says Punja Bhai, his words trying hard to paper over his poverty.

Rekha Ben had to outsource some of the weaving
to Punja Bhai as business took off. “I wake up at five in the morning,” she
says. “I sleep at eleven in the night. I keep working all the time. All the housework
is left for me to do. So is the outside work, including maintaining relations
with people in the community. The whole business is also on my head alone.” Rekha
Ben slides the bobbin with the weft thread into the shuttle and slides the
shuttle from right to left. 

Mesmerised, I watch the shuttle move from right
to left, left to right, Rekha Ben’s hand aligning the warp and the weft, a
perfect patola design in the making, and Kabir playing at the back of my
mind: 

‘नाचे ताना नाचे बाना नाचे कूँच पुराना करघै बैठा कबीर नाचे चूहा काट्या ताना&#39;



The warp and
weft dance, so does the
old koonch* Kabir at the
loom dances as the rat
cuts the thread



*a soft brush
used to clean the yarn



The writer wants to
thank Jaisukh Vaghela for his help.

The warp and weft of Rekha Ben’s life

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In the days leading up to the
Assamese festival of Rongali Bihu, the clacking sounds of treadles and shuttles
hitting the wooden frames of a loom can be heard all over this neighbourhood. 



In a quiet lane in Bhellapara
neighbourhood, weaver Patney Deuri is busy at work on her handloom. She is
weaving endi gamusas at her home in Bajrajhar village.
They need to be ready in time for the Assamese new year, held around the month of April. 



But these are not just any gamusas. The 58-year-old is well known
for the intricate floral designs she can weave. “I have orders to finish 30 gamusas before Bihu, because people will
have to gift those to guests,” she says. Gamusas
– woven pieces of cloth measuring roughly a metre and half in length – have
great significance in Assamese culture. They are particularly in demand by
locals during festivals, the red threads giving it a festive air. 



“It is my passion to weave flowers into the
fabric. Whenever I see any flower, I can make that exact flower design on the
clothes I weave. I just have to see it once,” says Deuri, smiling proudly. The Deuri community are listed as Scheduled Tribe in Assam.

The weavers in this village in
Mazbat sub-division of Assam are part of the state’s 12.69 lakh handloom
households with over 12 lakh weavers – the <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/fourth-all-india-handloom-census-2019-2020/">highest</a> for any state in
the country. Assam is also among the top states in the country producing
handloom products, especially silk in four varieties – eri, muga, mulberry and
tassar. 



Deuri uses eri (both cotton and
silk), also called ‘endi’ in the
local Bodo language. “I learnt weaving from my mother when I was young. Once I
learnt handling the loom on my own, I started weaving. Since then I have been
doing this work,” adds the master weaver. She can weave gamusas and fulam gamusas (Assamese
towels with floral designs on both sides), mekhela-chador
– a two-piece traditional Assamese dress for women) and endi chador (a large shawl).



To help with sales, in 1996, she set
up a self-help group (SHG). “When we founded Bhellapar Khudrasanchoy [small
savings] SHG, I started selling what I wove,” she says, proud of her
entrepreneurship. But it is the procuring of yarn that
weavers like Deuri feel is the real bottleneck in improved earnings. She says
buying yarn requires more capital money than she can afford, so she prefers to
work on commission where she gets the yarn from the shopkeepers or vendors and
is told what to make. “To make gamusas, I
will have to buy at least three kilos of yarn for the length and weft. A kilo
of endi costs Rs. 700. I cannot
afford to spend 2,100.” Traders give her yarn for 10 gamusas or three sarees together. “I work on that and complete it
as soon as possible,” she adds.



Madhobi Chaharia says she also slows down her
work as she cannot afford to stock up on yarn. She is Deuri’s neighbour, and is
dependent on others to buy yarn for the gamusas
she weaves. “My husband works as a daily labourer. Sometimes he gets work,
sometimes he doesn’t. In such situations, I cannot buy the yarn,” she tells
PARI.

Madhobi and Deuri’s situations are
not unusual: domestic weavers in the state all face this problem, says this
2020 <a href="https://www.jcreview.com/admin/Uploads/Files/61b5c75b27b581.75017242.pdf">report</a> by Dibrugarh
University which advocates interest-free loans and better credit facilities.
The lack of a strong working organisation among the women weavers has kept them
largely out of government schemes, health insurance, credit and market
linkages, it adds. 



“In three days I can complete one chadar,” Deuri adds. To make a
medium-size gamusa it takes a full
day of weaving and Deuri is paid a flat wage of Rs. 400 for every garment. The
price of an Assamese mekhela chador in
the market ranges between Rs. 5,000 to a few lakhs, but craftspeople like Deuri
only manage to earn around Rs. 6,000 to 8,000 a month.



Her earnings from weaving are not able to
sustain the family of seven – her husband Nabin Deuri, 66, and two children:
Rajoni, 34 and Rumi, 26, and the family of her late older son – so she also
works as a cook at a local lower primary school.

In Assam, almost all (11.79 lakh)
weavers are women, says the Fourth All India Handloom<a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/fourth-all-india-handloom-census-2019-2020/"> Census</a> (2019-2020), and
they must juggle home and weaving and some, like Deuri, also work in other
jobs. 



With multiple jobs to finish in a
day, Deuri’s day starts early – at 4 a.m. she seats herself on the bench in
front of the loom, its rusted legs placed on bricks for balance. “After working
till 7:30 to 8 a.m., I go to school [to cook]. On returning at around 2-3 p.m.,
I rest. By 4 p.m. I start again and continue till 10-11 p.m.” she says.



But it’s not only weaving. Deuri
must also ready the yarn, a physically demanding task. “You have to soak the
yarn, put it into starch and then dry it to strengthen the endi. I put two bamboo poles at two ends to spread the threads.
Once the thread is ready, I wrap them into the ra [warp beam]. Then you have to push the warp beam to the very end
of the loom. And then you run your hands and feet to weave,” she explains. 



Both the looms used by Deuri are traditional,
bought by her over three decades ago, she says. They have wooden frames mounted
on two poles of the areca nut tree; the peddles are made of bamboo. For
intricate designs, older weavers using traditional looms use thin bamboo strips
along with the midrib of a coconut palm leaf. They manually take the threads
through selected long-threads to make any design. To get the coloured threads
woven into the cloth, they have to weave the seri (thin bamboo slip) through
the vertical threads everytime after pushing the treadle. This a time-consuming
process and slows them down.

Although the Assam government’s <a href="https://eodb.assam.gov.in/resources/homePage/18/eodbnew/docs/Handloom%20Textiles.pdf">Handloom Policy</a>
adopted in 2017-2018 recognises that looms need to be upgraded and yarn made
more accessible, Deuri she says she has no financial support to go ahead. “I
have no connection with the handloom department. These looms are old and I have
not received any benefits from the department.” 



Unable to sustain weaving as a
livelihood, Taru Baruah from Hatigarh village of Udalguri district has left the
craft. “I was a pioneer in weaving. People used to come to me for mekhela chador and gamusas. But with competition from power looms and cheaper products
online, I am not weaving anymore,” says 51-year-old Taru, standing beside her
abandoned eri plantation which has no
silkworms now.



“I do not see people wearing
handmade clothes anymore. People mostly wear cheaper clothes made from
powerlooms. But I wear only homemade natural fabric clothes and I will continue
to weave for as long as I am alive,” says Deuri, as she continues pushing the
paddle to move the maaku (shuttle)
and design flowers on the Assamese towels she is masterfully creating. 



This story is supported by
a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).

Assam’s gamusa weavers are in trouble

ଦୁର୍ଦ୍ଦଶାରେ ଆସାମର ଗାମୁସା ବୁଣାକାର

కష్టాల్లో ఉన్న అస్సామ్ గామూసా నేతకారులు

சிரமத்தில் இருக்கும் அசாமின் கமுசா நெசவாளர்கள்

അസമിലെ ഗമുസ നെയ്ത്തുകാരുടെ ദുരിതങ്ങൾ

मुस्किल मं परे असम के गामुसा बुनकर

ਵਜੂਦ ਦੀ ਲੜਾਈ ਲੜਦੇ ਅਸਾਮ ਦੇ ਗਾਮੂਸਾ ਬੁਣਕਰ

ಸಂಕಷ್ಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಸ್ಸಾಮಿನ ಗಮುಸಾ ನೇಕಾರರು

असम: ख़तरे में पड़ गई है गमछा बुनकरों की आजीविका

संकट में बा गमछा बीने में माहिर मेहरारू लोग

সমস্যাত ভুগিছে অসমৰ শিপিনী

નાણાંભીડમાં ફસાયા આસામના ગમછા વણકરો

آسام کے گمچھا بنکروں کا ذریعہ معاش خطرے میں

মহাসংকটে অসমের গামছা তাঁতিরা

01-DSC00468-AK-Mirzapurs_carpet_weavers-tied_up_in_knots.jpg

Toofani and his team of weavers have
been working since 6:30 a.m. At the pace of 12 inches a day, the four of them
will take 40 days to finish the 23x6 feet galicha
(carpet) they are working on.



At half past noon, Toofani Bind
finally sits down to rest on a wooden bench. Behind him, in the tin shed where
he works, white cotton threads hang from a wooden frame at his workshop in Purjagir
Mujehara village of Uttar Pradesh. This is the heart of the state’s carpet
weaving industry, introduced in Mirzapur by the Mughals, and industrialised by
the British. UP dominates the national production of rugs, mats and carpets, accounting for half the national output (47 per cent), says the 2020 All India Handloom <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/fourth-all-india-handloom-census-2019-2020/#section02">Census</a>. 



The road leading up to the Purjagir
Mujehara village gets narrower as one gets off the highway from Mirzapur city.
On either side are pucca, mostly
one-storeyed houses, as well as kuccha homes
with thatched roofs; the smoke from cow dung cakes rising in the air. In the
day, men are hardly visible outdoors, but women can be seen doing household
chores like washing clothes under the hand pump or talking to a local vendor of
vegetables or fashion accessories. 



There are no signs that this is a
weaver’s locality – no carpets or galicha
as the locals refer to it, hang or are stacked outside. Although households
have an additional space or room allocated for carpet weaving, once ready,
middlemen pick it up for washing and cleaning. 



Speaking to PARI as he rests, Toofani says, “I
learnt it [knotted weaving] from my father and have been doing this since I was
12-13 years old.” His family belong to the Bind community (listed as Other
Backward Class in the state). Most weavers are listed under OBC in UP, says the
Census.

Their home workshops are cramped
spaces with mud flooring; the singular window and door left open for
ventilation, the loom taking up much of the space. Some workshops, like
Toofani’s, are long and narrow to accommodate the iron loom where multiple
weavers can work at one time. Others are within the house and use a
smaller-sized loom mounted on an iron or wooden rod; the entire family lends a
hand to the weaving. 



Toofani has been placing stitches
with woollen threads on a cotton frame – a technique known as knotted (or tapka) weaving, tapka being a reference to the number of stitches per square inches
of the carpet. The work is more physically demanding than other forms of
weaving for the artisan must manually add the stitches. To do this, Toofani has
to get up every few minutes to adjust the frame of sut (cotton) using a dambh
(bamboo lever). The continuous squatting and rising takes a toll. 



Unlike knotted weaving, tufted
weaving of carpets is a relatively newer form that uses a handheld machine for
embroidery. Knotted weaving is harder and the wages are lower, so many weavers
have switched from knotted to tufted in the past couple of decades. Many have
quit altogether, the earnings of Rs. 200-350 a day simply not enough. In May
2024, the state’s labour department <a href="https://www.comply4hr.com/mw/UP2024UP2024APR.pdf">announced</a> daily wages for semi-skilled labour at Rs. 451, but the
weavers here say they are not being paid that amount.    



There is competition too, for the
Purjagir weavers, says Ashok Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Mirzapur’s
Industries Department. In Uttar Pradesh, carpets are also woven in the
districts of Sitapur, Bhadohi and Panipat. “There is a slump in demand that has
affected supply,” he adds.   



There were other problems as well.
In the early-2000s, allegations of child labour in the carpet industry soured
its image. The arrival of the Euro made Turkey’s machine-made carpets better
priced, and slowly the European market was lost, says Siddh Nath Singh, a
Mirzapur-based exporter. He adds that the earlier state subsidy of 10-20 per
cent has dropped to 3-5 per cent. 



“Instead of earning 350 [rupees] a day for a
10-12 hour shift, why not work in a city for 550 as daily wages,” points out
Singh, who is the former chairman of Carpet Export Promotion Council (CEPC).

Toofani once mastered the art of weaving
with as many as 5-10 coloured threads at one go. But the low wages have
dampened his enthusiasm. “They [middlemen] are the ones who commission work.
While we keep on weaving day and night, they earn more than us,” he says dejectedly.




Today he earns Rs. 350 for a 10–12
hour shift, based on how much he has been able to weave and his wages are paid
at the end of the month. But he says this system needs to go, for it does not
take into account the hours he has put in. A lump sum payment of Rs. 700 a day
should be paid as labour charges for this skilled work, he feels.  



The middleman who gets them the
contracts are paid by the gaj (one gaj is about 36 inches). For four to
five gaj, which is the length of an
average carpet, the contractor will earn around Rs. 2,200 while the weaver will
only earn around Rs. 1,200. The contractors, however, pay for the raw material
– the kati (woollen thread) and sut (cotton yarn). 



Toofani has four sons and a daughter who are
still in school and does not want his children to follow in his footsteps. “Why
should they also do the same thing that their father and grandfather have spent
their lives doing? Shouldn’t they study and do something better?”

In a year, the Toofani and his team
weave 10-12 carpets, working 12 hours a day. Rajendra Maurya and Lalji Bind who
work with him, are both in their 50s. They work together in a small room with a
window and a door as the only source of ventilation. Summers are particularly
difficult. When temperatures soar, the rooms heat up as the asbestos roof of
this semi-pucca structure offers
little protection.



“The first step in making a galicha [carpet] is the taana
or tananna,” Toofani says. It
involves mounting the frame of cotton thread onto the loom.

In a rectangular room measuring
25x11 feet, there are trenches on either side where the loom is placed. The
loom is made of iron with ropes attached on one side to hold up the frame of
the carpet. Toofani bought it on loan five or six years ago, paying back Rs.
70,000 in monthly instalments. “In my father’s time, they used wooden looms
placed on stone pillars,” he says. 



Every knot in the carpet comprises charri (line stitch) for which the
weavers use woollen thread. To keep it intact, Toofani uses cotton thread to
form a line of lachhi (U-shaped loops
around the cotton yarn). He brings it to the front of the loose end of the
woollen thread and cuts it with a chura
– a small knife. Then, using a panja
(iron comb), he taps the entire line of stitches. “Kaatna aur thokna [cutting and tapping], that is knotted weaving,”
he sums up.



Weaving takes a toll on the
artisan’s health. “It has affected my eyesight over the years,” says Lalji
Bind, who has been in this profession for 35 years. He has to wear glasses while he works. Other
weavers complain of back ache and even sciatica. They feel like they had no
other choice but to take up this profession. “Our options were limited,”
Toofani says. In rural UP, almost 75 per cent of weavers are Muslim, says the
Census. 



“There were around 800 families 15 years ago
that were into knotted weaving,” recalls Arvind Kumar Bind, a weaver from
Purjagir, “today that number has come down to 100.” That&#39;s more than a third of
Purjagir Mujehara’s population of 1,107 (Census 2011).

In another workshop nearby, Baalji
Bind and his wife Tara Devi are working silently with full concentration on a soumak, a knotted carpet. The only sound
is the occasional snip of threads with a knife. A soumak is a single-coloured galicha
with a uniform design, and weavers who have smaller looms prefer making it. “I
will get 8,000 rupees for this piece if I finish within a month,” says Baalji. 



In both Purjagir and Bagh Kunjalgeer
– weaving clusters – although women like Baalji’s wife Tara work alongside and
account for almost a third of all weavers, their labour is not acknowledged by
others around them. Even children help out in between school and during their
summer break, their labour helping things speed up. 



Hajaari Bind and his wife Shyam Dulari are
working to finish a carpet in time. He misses his two sons who used to help but
have now migrated to Surat for wage work. “Bachon ne humse bola
ki hum log isme nahi phasenge, papa [My children told me, we don’t want to
be trapped in this, papa].”

The falling incomes and hard labour
are pushing not just the young away, but even 39-year-old Shah-e-Alam, who left
weaving three years ago and now drives an e-rickshaw. A resident of Natwa,
eight kilometres from Purjagir, he had started weaving carpets when he was 15
years old and over the next 12 years he moved from knotted weaving to becoming
a middleman in tufted weaving. Three years ago, he sold off his loom.  



“Posa
nahi raha tha [it wasn’t enough to sustain us],” he says, sitting in his
two-room newly constructed house. Between 2014 to 2022, he worked as a labourer
at a tile-making company in Dubai which ensured a monthly pay of Rs. 22,000.
“That at least helped me build this nest,” he says, pointing to the tiled
floor. “While I was getting only Rs. 150 per day as a weaver, at least as a
driver I’m able to make Rs. 250-300 daily.” 



The state government’s One District
One Product scheme provides financial aid to carpet-weavers while the central
government’s Mudra Yojana helps in availing loans at concessional rates. But
weavers like Shah-e-Alam are unaware of their existence despite the awareness
campaigns running at the block-level.



A short drive from Purjagir
Mujehara, in the neighbourhood of Bagh Kunjal Geer, Zahiruddin is engaged in
the craft of gultarash – fine tuning
the designs on a tufted carpet. The 80-year-old had enrolled for the
Mukhyamantri Hastshilp Pension Yojana. The state government scheme, started in
2018, ensures a pension of Rs. 500 to artisans over the age of 60. But after
receiving the money for three months, Zahiruddin says, the pension stopped
abruptly. 



But he is happy with the rations he receives
under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). Even weavers in
Purjagir village told PARI about receiving “Modi
ka galla” [food grains as part of
Prime Minister Modi’s scheme].

For every kilo of cotton thread (sut) that Shamshu-Nisa straightens on
her iron spinning wheel, the 65-year-old earns seven rupees. That adds up to
roughly Rs. 200 a day. Her late husband, Hasruddin Ansari wove knotted carpets
before the family shifted to tufted in the early 2000s. Her son, Siraj Ansari
is not looking at a future in weaving as he says even the market for tufted
weaving has slumped.    



In the same neighbourhood as
Zahiruddin, Khalil Ahmed lives with his family. In 2024, the 75-year-old
received the Padma Shri award for his contribution to durries. Browsing through
his designs he points to an inscription in Urdu: “Is par jo baithhega, woh kismatwala hoga [one who sits on this
carpet will have good fortune],” he reads out. 



But good fortune is eluding those who weave
them.

Mirzapur’s carpet weavers: tied up in knots

చిక్కుముళ్ళు పడిన మీర్జాపూర్ తివాచీ నేతకారుల జీవితాలు

ગૂંચમાં પડેલા મિર્ઝાપુરના ગાલીચાના વણકરો

मिर्जापुर के कालीन बुनकर गाँठ के फांदा मं अरझे

پھندوں میں الجھی مرزاپور کے قالین بُنکروں کی زندگی

ਮਿਰਜ਼ਾਪੁਰ- ਧਾਗਿਆਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਉਲ਼ਝੀ ਜੁਲਾਹਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਹਯਾਤੀ

பின்னல்களில் சிக்கியுள்ள நெசவாளர் வாழ்க்கை

മിർസാപൂരിലെ പരവതാനി നെയ്ത്തുകാരുടെ കുരുക്കുകൾ

ಕಗ್ಗಂಟಾಗಿರುವ ಮಿರ್ಜಾಪುರದ ಕಾರ್ಪೆಟ್ ನೇಕಾರರ ಬದುಕು

गांठों में उलझी मिर्ज़ापुर के कालीन बुनकरों की ज़िंदगी

বয়ন শিল্পৰে জড়িত মিৰ্জাপুৰৰ শিপিনীসকলৰ সমস্যাৰ নাই আদি-অন্ত

গেরোয় আটকে মির্জাপুরের গালিচা বুনকররা

मिरजापुर के कालीन कारीगर: जिनगिए गांठ बनल जात बा

ମିର୍ଜାପୁରର ଗାଲିଚା ବୁଣାକାର: ଅଡୁଆ ସୂତାରେ ଜୀବନ

01-IMG_20240105_112323272-SS-I_want_to_play_for_India.jpg

The
popular name is ‘Virat Kohli’. India’s cricketing icon has many fans here in
Dungra Chhota. 

It’s
after 10 on a winter morning and the dozen or so young residents are engrossed
in a game. The square patch of open land flanked by bright green corn fields
will not strike you as a cricket field, but the cricket enthusiasts of this
village in Banswara district know each and every yard of it, from the popping
crease to the boundary line. 

Everyone
knows the most effective way of striking up a conversation with cricket fans is
to ask about their favourite players. Here, it may be Virat Kohli to start
with, but other names also get thrown up soon enough – Rohit Sharma, Jasprit
Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, Mohammed Siraj…

Finally,
18-year-old Shivam Labana adds, “I like Smriti Mandhana.” The left-handed
opening batter and ex-captain of the India Women T20 squad is one of the most
popular cricketers in the country.

But
she is not the only left-handed batter being discussed on this field, as we
soon find out.

Among the gaggle of aspiring bowlers and batters
– all boys – the single girl stands out. Just nine years old, Hitakshi Rahul
Harkishi is fully kitted in white shoes and batting pads with thigh and elbow
guards securely strapped onto her slight frame.

“I want to be a batsman. Mereko sabse acchi lagti hai batting [I love batting the most],”
she tells PARI.  “Main India ke liye khelna
chahungi [I want to play for India],” she declares. Not so keen on talking,
Hitakshi is however more than willing to stand at the crease and demonstrate
her game. Walking up the hard pitch she hits a few season ball deliveries into
the chain-link fencing that works as the net.

Hitakshi’s
desire to play for India is supported by her father who is also her coach. She
reels off her schedule: “After school I come home and sleep for an hour. Then I
train from four to eight [in the evening].” On weekends and holidays like
today, she also trains in the morning from around 7:30 a.m. to noon.

“We have been training continuously for around
14 months now. I also need to train along with her,” says her father, Rahul
Harkishi speaking to PARI in January 2024. He is the owner of a vehicle garage in Dungra Bada, Banswara district of
Rajasthan. Proud and confident of his daughter’s abilities he says, “Shaandaar playing hai [She plays really well]. As a father I shouldn’t be strict
with her but I have to be.”

Her
parents also ensure a healthy diet for her. “We have eggs four times a week,
and some meat too,” Rahul informs. “She also drinks two glasses of milk
everyday as well as cucumber and carrots in salad.”

The
effort shines through in Hitakshi’s play. She is used to practising with older
players like Shivam Labana, 18, and Ashish Labana, 15, two boys from Dungra
Chhota who have played at the district level. Both are bowlers and have been
participating in tournaments for 4-5 years now including the Labana Premier
League (LPL), where more than 60 teams from the Labana community compete
against each other.

“Back
when we first participated in the LPL, it was just us boys. We didn’t have
Rahul bhaiyya [Hitakshi’s father] as
coach then,” says Shivam. “I took five wickets in one of the matches.”

These days they also play for the Hitakshi Club
set up by Rahul. “We are training her [Hitakshi],” Shivam adds. “We want her to
debut in our team. Girls in our community don’t play [cricket] so we think it’s
good that she is.”

Luckily
for Hitakshi, her parents are dreaming differently as one of her young team
mates says, “Unka dream hai usko aage bhejenge [They have a
dream of sending her ahead].” 

Despite
the popularity of the sport, families hesitate to let their children pursue
cricket. Shivam mentions a 15-year-old teammate’s similar situation, “He’s played
at the state level multiple times and wants to continue but is thinking of
leaving. His family will probably send him to Kota.” Synonymous with coaching
classes and higher education, Kota seems as divorced from cricket as anything
can be.

Sheela Harkishi, Hitakshi’s mother, is a Hindi
teacher to primary and secondary school students. She too is a big cricket fan,
as everyone else in their family. “I know the name of every player in the
Indian team and I recognise them all. Although I like Rohit Sharma the most,”
she adds with a smile.

Other
than her work as a teacher, she also manages the garage where we meet her.
“Right now, we don’t have a lot of girls and boys from Rajasthan playing
cricket. We have tried a little for our daughter and we will keep trying.”

For
nine-year-year old Hitakshi there is still a long way to go but her parents are
determined to “do everything necessary to make her a skilled cricketer.”

“I don’t know what the future holds,” says
Rahul. “But as a father and as a good sportsman, I can say for sure that we
will have her play for India.”

‘I want to play for India’

‘എനിക്ക് ഇന്ത്യയ്ക്കുവേണ്ടി കളിക്കണം’

'இந்தியாவுக்காக விளையாட விரும்புகிறேன்'

’میں انڈیا کے لیے کھیلنا چاہتی ہوں‘

‘আমি ভারতের হয়ে খেলতে চাই’

‘నేను భారతదేశం తరఫున ఆడాలనుకుంటున్నాను’

'ਮੈਂ ਇੰਡੀਆ ਲਈ ਖੇਡਣਾ ਚਾਹੁੰਦੀ ਹਾਂ!'

‘મારે ભારત માટે રમવું છે’

'ನಾನು ಭಾರತದ ಪರವಾಗಿ ಆಡಬಯಸುತ್ತೇನೆ'

‘मला भारतासाठी खेळायचंय’

‘ମୁଁ ଭାରତ ପାଇଁ ଖେଳିବାକୁ ଚାହୁଁଛି’

‘हम इंडिया ला खेले चाहत बानी’

‘मंय भारत सेती खेले चाहत हवं’

‘মই ভাৰতৰ হৈ খেলিব বিচাৰোঁ’

‘मैं इंडिया के लिए खेलना चाहती हूं’

01-PXL_20231225_073251407-SK-A_kamalkosh_cane_mat_tells_a_story.jpg

Few
people can appreciate the finely-woven kamalkosh
mat. 

Fewer
still can weave it. 

Made
in West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, these highly detailed cane mats, made
with fine strips of starched cane, stand out from other mats for the cultural
motifs on them.

“A
traditional kamalkosh is adorned with
auspicious motifs such as the kola gaach
[banana tree], mayur [peacock], mangal ghat [urn with a coconut], swastik [symbolising well-being],” says
Prabhati Dhar. 

<a></a>Prabhati is among the handful of
weavers of kamalkosh who can weave
these into a mat, and she started young, at the age of 10. “Everyone in this
village [Ghegirghat]
starts weaving mats from a very young age,” says the 36-year-old, dismissing
any suggestion of precocity. “My mother could weave the kamalkosh only in parts, but my father had a good grasp of design
and would explain well, saying, ‘try weaving this
design like this’. Although he couldn’t weave himself, Prabhati feels she
gained a great deal from his detailed explanations.

We are sitting in the
verandah of her home in Ghegirghat.
The covered porch is where most weavers in the region prefer to work.
Her family is all around her, helping with various tasks connected to the craft.
The actual weaving of the motifs within the strands of the mat, is
conceptualised and crafted only by her. “We are habituated to doing this with
our memory,” she says about her design process.

Krishna Chandra Bhowmik
is a trader from the adjacent Dhaliabari town who often orders kamalkosh from Prabhati. “Kamalkosh
holo ekti shaukeen jinish. [Kamalkosh is an object that a connoisseur will value.] The worth of a good pati is understood by a Bengali person
only. That’s why they are the main buyers of the high-end mats,” he tells PARI.

The
Dhar family lives in Ghegirghat village,
almost exclusively populated by weavers, as in fact the entire Cooch Behar-I
block. These are pati weavers, with
roots in Bangladesh, each carrying a distinct style and craftsmanship based on
where they came from. But that’s another story, coming soon. 

The
mats are broadly categorised as pati
(strip) weaving and they range from mota
pati (coarse mats) to the finest and rare kamalkosh. The cane (Schumannianthus dichotomus) is a native
variety found here in the Cooch Behar region of West Bengal. 

To
make the kamalkosh mats, the
outermost layer of the cane stalk must be carefully sliced into thin strips
(cane slips) called bet which are then boiled in starch for added lustre and whiteness, a process that
allows for better dyeing. 

This critical preparatory work is done by her
husband Manoranjan Dhar. She recalls how after she was married, the young bride
told her husband she could weave fine mats but needed the suitable raw material
and so “my husband gradually learnt to slice fine cane slips for weaving the kamalkosh.”

We
are watching Prabhati’s hands as she speaks to us. The only other sound is the
rustle of cane strips as they move through her nimble fingers. It’s a quiet
neighbourhood of houses closely packed, and the occasional motor vehicle passing
by. Banana and betelnut palms surround the house; dense cane thickets rising
seven feet high can be seen from the house. 

This master craftsperson
uses traditional hand measurements – ‘ek
haath’ is roughly 18 inches, measured using an arm’s length. A two and a
half hands wide and four hands long mat would roughly measure four by six feet.


Prabhati pauses her
work to flip through photos on her mobile, showing us some of the kamalkosh mats she has made for her
customers. “The kamalkosh mats are
made on order only. We weave them when the local traders order them. These
specialised mats do not sell in the haat [weekly market].” 

There is a recent trend of personalising mats
with names and dates woven into the kamalkosh
mat. “For marriages, the clients tell us the name of the couple they want to be
woven on the mat. Words such as ‘Shubho
Bijoya’ – a
greeting on Vijaya Dashami –
are also common requests,” she adds as these special mats are brought out on
occasions such as marriages or festivals. “It is easier to weave words in
English than in Bengali script,” points out Prabhati, the curvy-linear letters of
Bengali presenting a challenge.

It’s a rare skill as testified
by Pradip Kumar Rai, the secretary of the Cooch Behar-I Block Pati Shilpa
Samabay Samiti. A weaver himself, he says,
“there are approximately 10,000 mat weavers in the whole of Cooch Behar
district. However, there are hardly about 10-12 rare kamalkosh weavers in the region.” 

The Samiti dates back
to 1992 and has 300 weavers. It is the foremost cooperative society for mat
weaving in the area and conducts the bi-weekly pati haat (weekly mat
market) at Ghughumari – the only dedicated mat market in the Cooch Behar
region where roughly 1,000 weavers and almost 100 traders show up on a
single market day. 

Prabhati is one of the
last practising kamalkosh weavers in
the region, a responsibility she takes seriously. “My mother weaves daily. Even
one day she doesn’t take a holiday. Only if we have to go out for an errand, or
to my grandfather’s place, then she takes off,” says her daughter Mandira who
has picked up the skill by watching since she was just five. 

The couple Prabhati and Manoranjan, have two
children, 15-year old Mandira and seven-year old Piyush (fondly called Tojo). Both
are actively learning the craft in the time they get outside school hours.
Mandira lives with Prabhati&#39;s parents and visits home twice a week to help her
mother with the weaving. The young and energetic Tojo is also a serious
learner, and sincerely prepares the cane slips for weaving. While friends around
are playing cricket, he gets down to work.

Children in the neighbourhood pick up that Prabhati’s skill
offers a chance to experiment they pester her for classes: “my neighbour’s
daughter said to me, ‘kaki [aunt],
teach me also!’.” Her home turns into a creative space during holidays and
weekends. “They are very eager to learn how to weave the peacocks and the
trees. However, they will not be able to weave it right away. Hence, I ask them
to finish the edges of the mat, and observe while I weave the patterns.
Gradually I will teach them,” she says. 

Although Mandira is
learning how to weave the kamalkosh, she is certain she wants a
profession that pays more and gives her time off. “Maybe I will undertake
training for nursing,” she says. “In mat weaving there is a lot of hard work as
well. If one does a [another] job, then one can sit, relax and earn. One
doesn’t have to toil all the time. That’s why no one [in my generation] wants
to take up mat weaving.”

To prove her point she
lists out her mother’s day: “My mother wakes up at 5:30 in the morning everyday. She
sweeps and cleans the house. Then she sits to weave a mat for an hour. She also
cooks for us since we eat in the morning. She eats and then weaves until noon,
breaking for a bath. Then again, she sweeps the house, and sits to weave in the
afternoon. She goes on weaving until 9 in the night. Then again, she cooks,
we eat, and go to sleep.” 

“My parents don’t go for melas because there is a lot to do at home. We have to try to
produce a pati every day as only then
we are able to secure a monthly family income of 15,000 rupees needed for our
essential daily expenses,” says Mandira.

The process of making a
pati is locally termed as samastigata kaaj – a collective effort
of the family and community. “Eta amader patishilpir kaaj ta ekok bhabhe hoye
na. Taka jodate gele shobai ke haath dite hoye [Our occupation of mat
weaving does not happen in isolation. Everyone has to pitch in to secure a
decent income at the end of the month],” says Prabhati who relies on her family
for the prep. 

The work is divided
into “maather kaaj [field work] and barir kaaj [home-based work],” says
Kanchan Dey, from a weaving family and an authority on the craft. He explains
how the men harvest the cane plant, cut and slice it into pliable slips for
weaving while the women boil the cane slips in starch, dry them and weave the
mat. Even the younger children take on the gender divide in the tasks – girls
come to watch her
weave, while the boys try their hand at the cane splitting. Dey is a village schoolmaster from
neighbouring Gangaler Kuthi village.

The number of patibet [cane stalks] required to produce a single pati [mat] of standard size 6 x 7 feet
is 160 stalks. The time taken to prepare these stalks into ready pliable strips
is two days of work, done by men. The two-pronged process, known as bet sholai and bet tola involve dissecting the culm into multiple strips, removing
the woody inner core, and then carefully splitting each thin strip of say, 2
mm, to 0.5 mm thickness. It’s a complicated process requiring a seasoned and
meticulous hand for the fine splitting.

While regular mats are
woven using the natural colour cane slip, the kamalkosh is typically woven with two colours,” adds the master
weaver who must sit in a squat position for hours, sometimes using a wooden piri (low stool) for support. Prabhati uses
her feet as a hold on the edges of the already woven parts, in order to avoid
them from fraying; both her hands are used to lift a calculated bunch of cane
strips according to the weaving pattern. 

She manipulates close
to 70 cane slips at one time. For every complete line of the cane mat that she
weaves, Prabhati has to interweave a single strip up and down through about 600
cane slips, with no other lifting mechanism but her hands. She has to perform
this approximately 700 times in order to weave a mat of six by seven feet.

In the time taken to prepare and weave a single kamalkosh, 10 regular mats can be made
and the price reflects that, says Prabhati. “Making a kamalkosh is more hard work, but it’s also more money.” When orders
for kamalkosh are few, Prabhati also weaves simpler mats, in fact in a
year she says she weaves more of these as they move faster.

The unassuming Prabhati says she enjoys her role as a parent and her quiet reputation as a kamalkosh weaver. “I have the ability to weave the kamalkosh, that’s why I make them. Ami garbabodh kori. [I feel a sense of pride].” After some hesitation, she adds, “many others cannot weave it. I can weave this rare mat that’s why you have come to me, isn’t it? You didn’t go to anyone else!” This story is supported by a fellowship from Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF).