iron nails and camel dung

 

the more i look at the saree, the more it wraps me in thoughts. random ones that i can’t arrange beautifully like the profusion of hand printed patterns on it.

 

i want to write a simple piece, i mutter to myself… about those nails and camel dung, but i can’t stop the steady stream of images and words: shadowy memories of things heard far away in the past, and some just the other day. cotton trade, american civil war, indigo revolt… neel bidroho, east india company, slavery, justice, sassoon docks, farmer suicides.

and jostling with these: beauty, artistry, heritage, craftsmanship, inventiveness… desert, earth, sun, river, an aura of indestructibility.

 

i touch the saree, its raw, not-machined feel, the rich deep indigo base allowing just the bit of colour through that’s needed to see the patterns in red, black, and dull white. the colours seem to like each other, nothing standing out too much, calling attention to itself. layers of patterns mesh and mingle; ancient motifs, something tells you. i’m surprised by the thickness of the fabric, but not its sturdy ruggedness; feels like integrity. the kind only pure, handloom cotton has.

the cotton crop has failed again, at least eleven farmers have committed suicide in telengana barely a couple of weeks ago. my malkha sarees, this is one of them, came from the same part of the country. a dear friend picked them up in october, from malkha’s shop in hyderabad. i’d read somewhere, the name malkha combines “malmal” and “khadi”.

malmal. you instantly think of softness. of something fine and gentle. of your mother’s sarees and pretty dupattas, and a song. there’s not much in the indian experience that hindi cinema hasn’t written lyrics on, so why not this dreamy airy fabric. “hawa mein udta jaaye mora laal dupatta malmal ka…” from the 1949 film barsaat, traipses through my mind. to translate terribly: goes flying in the breeze, red scarf of malmal mine.

 

credit: uploader

and khadi, the handspun cotton i’ve loved since i was i don’t know how old. an assertion of freedom and self reliance, a cotton yarn and a simple unpretentious cotton cloth. i have always liked the class-free temper of khadi. the farmer wears it, the shopkeeper, the rickshaw puller, the intellectual, the politician, the apolitical, the doyenne of the cocktail circuit, the cool d.u. (delhi university) student, the behen ji, the communist leaning actor, the superstar, the journalist, the lyricist, the freedom fighter, the everyday ordinary human being like me.

i liked the name malkha. i liked whatever i read about it on the net. and suddenly, i had to have a saree from malkha. my friend was most cooperative, she bought me not just one, but three sarees, and one of them was a gift.

malkha is an attempt to bring just practices to the business of growing, weaving, and selling cotton. they don’t shun technology, but they stay away from technology that isn’t really needed in this trade, like power looms. india has woven textiles for millennia, long long before the industrial revolution and the big machines came; though yes, the camel dung was always there, and some iron that would rust; but really, why would we throw away all the knowledge and the striking quality of handspun fabric and replace it with mundane machine milled stuff? okay, you want to bring in new tech, get all worldly wise and flaunt your progress, export, have more choice, fine… but why not keep what you’re ridiculously good at and which feeds millions and millions (no exaggeration) of people, and give it the place, the policies, the price it deserves.

so that farmers don’t have to die. weavers’ kids don’t have to tell their parents, there’s not enough money in this, so off i go to seek my livelihood elsewhere. the artistry of the weaver, the spinner, the ginner, the dye maker, the block maker, the pattern creator, doesn’t have to wither away.

the saree that’s making me wonder about things is a block printed one, an ajrakh. started hearing this word quite recently, maybe a year or so ago, the art though is ancient. ajrakh might refer to the arabic word for blue, azraq, and since one of the main colours used is indigo, this might be true. it may even mean “keep it today” as in “aaj rakh”. ajrakh is a tradition from sindh; you see it on scarves, turbans, stoles, it’s given as a token of respect, it’s part of life.

 

back in the sixteenth century, my flip through the net tells me, the khatri community moved to kutch in the north west of gujarat and started using locally available dyes and other material to make the prized ajrakh. khatris are muslims. i feel pretty certain the story of blue will take us to connections with many old traditions and people. for the jews i know blue has great significance, and if you see the pottery of turkey, morocco, the middle east, also the evil eye, its blue in all its shades everywhere. “neel” is blue in bengali, it’s the word for indigo as well, the plant. neel always reminds me of oppression and injustice and greed, of farmers exhausted and poor, and dying; of farmers finally revolting against the british planters in bengal.

 

ajrakh came into being long before all that. before the british came to india. before slaves were brought from africa to america to grow cotton. before the american civil war started to create problems of cotton supply to britain’s textile mills, and so other sources of cotton had to be found. before sir david sassoon moved to bombay from baghdad for jews were being harassed by daud pasha. before his company set up western india’s first commercial wet docks in 1875. before the sassoon docks helped “establish the cotton trade” between india and britain. before the hunger for wealth made cotton barons kill off most varieties and go for only the kind the machines in manchester or wherever could handle. before the power loom came into existence. before khadi became a movement and malmal dupattas flew in a song. before i fell in love with sarees.

in ajrakh printing, the cloth is first washed in water then comes the process of “saaj”, when it’s submerged in a solution of castor oil, soda ash, and camel dung overnight. it’s dried the next day in the sun and then… returned to the camel dung solution. the process of soaking and drying is repeated a few times. till the cloth is ready to be washed and put into mordants that fix the colours. why the camel dung? no idea. but there is some pretty good reason i am sure.

as i read about ajrakh printing, i am gaping at the inventiveness. how did these guys work out the various aspects of this technique? how do you figure out, for instance, that by fermenting scrap iron, jaggery, and gram flower, then taking the liquid or “iron water” and mixing it with tamarind seed powder, you’ll get the colour black?

ajrakh involves several steps. colour isn’t printed on cloth directly, instead a resist paste is block printed onto the material and then the cloth is dyed. this is repeated with different blocks and dyes till the final patterns and colours are in place. it’s complicated and relies on deep knowledge, innate skills, the right kind of sun, earth, water, and of course, cotton. spock, i’m sure, would have said, “fascinating!”

spock?

there goes my mind again, a bit red dupattaish today.

referred to material from these websites: travels in textiles, gaatha, malkha. 

an article in the hindu about malkha and weavers.

blue of indigo, red of madder.

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wrote this piece on ajrakh on november 28, 2017 in writersbrew.

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sarees tell stories | the indigo ajrakh cotton, the blue and white and the grey kalamkari printed cottons (in the image with three sarees) from malkha, hyderabad, bought/gifted october 2017. the other blue ajrakh in that image may not be the real thing, just a nice print, from a fair in singapore.

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on a slow, blurry morning.

 

 

peculiarly light and airy feeling as i throw the chanderi on the bed and place a black silk blouse on it. black and white, no… black and off white. creases and crush as nothing is ironed. so what though, still looks rather wonderful.

it’s been a fuzzy headed morning. not enough sleep, and now two consecutive days of dressing up. i know since i started a whole blog on sarees and plaster it with my shots in sarees, one might be forgiven for thinking i love decking up.

i do. but only once in a while. say once a month. two days in a row, my brain is longing for grunge.

but the off white chanderi calls. it seems to know my state of mind. “what blouse?” i mutter to myself. “why not black,” says the chanderi. “no, not the one with zardosi neckline. just plain black.”

 

i’d worn my mother’s pearl necklace last night. that and its matching earrings were the only jewellery my mother kept with herself. she’d wear them once in a way if there was a dinner party or even a wedding in assam, where we lived in a tiny oil township called duliajan when i was growing up. the rest of her jewellery remained in a locker in calcutta, for family weddings she’d take out a couple of things at times. otherwise, the bank of india vault by deshapriya park kept all the glitter embraced in its cold steel heart. 

 

the pearls with their kundan ornaments, the brightness of my mother touches me when i slip the necklace on. maybe i’ll wear it again today. and just plain pearl bangles, made when i got married nearly forty years ago, with pearls my grandmother had kept for many years.

“what say?” i ask the gauzy one.

“not bad,” comes the nod from the chanderi, along with a golden wink. is it acquiring a singaporean tone? how wannabe, it’s just arrived here.

“what earrings?” i mutter.

my mind goes blank again.

 

 

 

 

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sarees tell stories | off white chanderi saree from handlooms karigar based in the town of chanderi, madhya pradesh. bought in 2022.

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i see i started with "peculiarly". my mother used to say "peculiar" often... i can almost see her looking at me writing this and murmuring it with that glint in her eyes. 

 

 

 

 

 

throwing on some deep think: the friday saree

 

 

something is slipping away, and it's not just the pleats of the saree between my fingers. i realise as i go through things in life, it's not about how fat you are or how thin (oh, i've worried about that a lot), or how much or little money you have (no, really), how big or small your house is, what grades you or your kids got in school, what people said or didn't say about you, whether you travelled the world or not. no, none of these and a zillion other things we allow much space in our thoughts... no, none. it's really about the people in your life. those you love, to be precise.

it's all there. in just that.

i've watched many of these people go. and with each one, something has slipped away, never to be caught back and made part of my life as i live. with them maybe some of me has gone too. 

why such mutterings on a post about a saree i wore last friday for shabbat? i guess i felt the yards of silk slipping around me, and along came these thoughts.

some of me has gone no doubt, but there's more coming along.

a me i have no knowledge of, nor have met before.

the languid layers of phyllo pastry lying supine amid liberal brushings of oil wink at me. "who'd have thought you'd want to make baklava one day!" they seem to say with an amused air.

almonds, walnuts, pistachios get crushed and entangled with surprise.

cardamom, cinnamon, lemon, honey, and sugar simmer and saunter into my memory bank. 

the sharp edge of the knife plunges into the pastry and cuts diamonds that will be forever.

 

 

as i make the baklava i think, i guess there have to be cuts and deep wounds for sweetness to pour all the way in. i am making our first ever baklava with one of those wondrous people whom it's really about. she slipped into my life when i least expected it. she gives me the courage to try untried worlds, to find what else is out there, and take the next step forward even though i may trip on my pleats.

 

i'd never have bought a green and yellow checked saree with shocking pink and purple borders. but this gadwal was fated to be mine. came to me through a mistake... am i grateful for mistakes. you can read that story here.

  

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sarees tell stories | gadwal silk from abhihaara social enterprise, hyderabad, bought 2020. you can find them on instagram @abhihaara

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a kanjeevaram mood: the friday saree

 

 

 

a saree from a memorable trip to a city that never disappoints, where there’s always something lovely and laid back to forget this rough hard world in, where i’ve been happy, where i started writing… my first job as a copywriter. where i keep wanting to return. bangalore…

where you get some of the best kanjeevarams. 

this one is from an old old shop called rukmini hall in an old wholesale market called chikpet (small market). went with a friend whose mother’s wedding sarees wore bought here. 

what a find this shop… when am i going back again?

sime days it just has to be a kanjeevaram.

 

 

 

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pleats held aloft

 

i’d woken up crying that morning. i must have been fourteen at the time. those days, i was staying with my grandparents in delhi, while my parents were in england for a couple of years. 

the cause of the barrage of tears was a dream, if one can call it that. in it my mother was there, but she was slim and wearing a skirt.

i can never quite adequately explain how scary that was, how alien, how… could such a thing happen. even if it hadn’t occurred in reality.

i wept so much, my grandmother had to make a fairly expensive trunk call to my mother, and i think it was only after i spoke to her that i calmed down. somewhat. 

why was i in such a state? well, to me, mother meant large, and saree. i’d never seen her in anything else ever. and i couldn’t even conceive of her as shapely or svelte. she was voluminous contours, generous girth, all botero, absolute comfort and security. when i buried my face against her my skin touched her saree, a thousand storms couldn’t knock her down, she was safety. and she was far away. imagine my plight at being struck by that vision as i slept, defences down. 

a skirt? she wore a parrot green and orange kanjeevaram to the jung frau in the alps. there’s a shot of her at the ice museum, in fact, if any proof is needed. frilly large cotton nighties that many mothers had started wearing as we grew up, or salwars, churidars, lehengas… my mother wore none of them. she was always in a saree, casually thrown on, with a blouse of another colour because she couldn’t be bothered getting matching ones, no attempt to be fashionable whatsoever, graceful without trying to be so.  

her two years in the uk had her taking buses and tubes, the last time she’d tackled public transport was in college, she managed with aplomb in her saree. only compromise, instead of handloom or printed cottons and kotas or silks that she usually liked to wear, she switched to mostly printed synthetics. can’t say they were good to look at, but they were convenient. actually, back in college too it was sarees. she told me she started wearing them when she was thirteen, a year younger than i was on the night of the bawling dream.  

of late, i find myself wondering whether i should start wearing a saree every day. maybe all the time. like ma used to. the thought does drift by every now and then and sets me mulling. 

my lovely grandmother, who called ma that day and made sure i was ok even as my “nightmare” brought on much mirth in the family, also wore a saree all the time. as did my other grandmother.  

images of crisp taañt or handloom cottons, usually white, worn the bengali “shadha sheedhe” / plain and simple way, float by. my mother’s mother wore silks or nylons (very in back in the sixties and seventies) when she stepped out. then she preferred the pleats-in-front, pallu-over-left-shoulder way of wearing the saree. my father’s mother stuck to the shadha sheedhe style everywhere. i remember how deftly both grandmothers tucked their sarees. a couple of swishes and voila. 

though my mother wore sarees from the time she was considered grown up – tradionally, you ceased to be a child at thirteen i guess in many cultures (okay, i’m rolling my eyes, this whole thing needs much discussion) – she didn’t ever insist that i do the same.  

as a child, for some festivals i wore sarees, but really hardly ever. somewhere along the way, when i was around twenty, i started wearing them more often. over the years, i’ve been through a bit of a love-hate relationship with this taken for granted garment. currently, it’s love. but things might change any time. 

so, why do i ponder whether i should wear a saree every day? perhaps i want to step into that circle where my mother sits with her arch smile. where my grandmother’s eyes are gentle as they spot me, and my other grandmother reads her mahabharata quietly. their sarees wrap around them snug and comforting. soft and lucid. 

should i just go ahead and do it?  

well, maybe not. at least, not right now. my pants and loose shirts are still me. so are the long skirts, the block printed tops, the occasional gharara or mekhela or  something else, and of course the fading cotton nighties (nightmare inducing for some). 

for now, let’s just wear a saree when i feel like it. as i did this passover. the first night was on a shabbat. we were in london. it was cold. we had to walk back home late at night after the seder. i wear slight heels with my sarees, but walking on them is tough on my knees, and this would be a forty-five minute trudge. i wore a saree anyway, and ditched the heels too. at five foot nothing that is an act of sheer courage. 

my daughter donned a cool black dress and didn’t have to hold her pleats aloft in a tight grip as we plodded home at 3am, wrapped in sweaters and coats. who knows, maybe some day she’d want to…  

there i go dreaming again.

 

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sarees tell stories | maroon fine tangail saree with peach motifs, unusual four leaf clover motif, from meera basu, kolkata, bought around 2008.

 

 

 

first night of passover was on a shabbat, a friday.

 

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that thing about classics: the friday saree

 

it's a heavy silk, its weight lets it fall with a ballerina's grace. it flows and extends and pirouettes around you. i wore the black and white patola last evening admiring everything about it again. the fabric, the tie and dye, the restraint, the soft smooth feel against my skin and in my hand as i held it. bought in bangalore, years ago, a dear friend and my husband had chosen it. i had just started getting mad about sarees. my friend wasn't well then, but she had still taken my husband to the shop, bandhej, and helped him select a saree for me. i thought of my friend again. i had met her at the ad agency where i first met the mac. where i started thinking of steve jobs. i thought about my husband, who's away on work at the moment. he is not exactly the saree buying kind of man, but he'd gone anyway, and chosen a black and white. predictable but always fabulous. classic. like my friend, my husband, and of course mr jobs. so i wore the saree i was planning to, hope the look was just so.

previous post: a saree for mr jobs

 

 

 

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photo credit ferolyn fernandez

a saree for mr jobs

 

the mind is a messy place. nothing comes to it in a simple clear way. thoughts rush or meander or just walk by aimlessly, sometimes they crash, they burn, then again thoughts and more thoughts.

i am sitting here this morning, staring at my computer screen, letting this ride of thoughts go on. not that i can stop it. i am perhaps lonely, a little disturbed. something from last evening lingers. a tremor in the brain, in the heart. i want my mind to focus, think of something that is of use, that has a direction.

should i write about sarees? always engages my mind. i am staring at the computer screen. an imac.

was it 1991 or 1992 that i saw a computer that said hi to me? bangalore, my first job as a copywriter. a big bulky computer on my desk. first time such a machine anywhere near me. press f1, press f2... green type on black screen. a little stodgy. wordpress? think it was called that, the software.

every once in a way, a call to the mac room. an airconditioned cubicle with glass all around, where the macs sat and only those who were allowed to touch them were allowed entry. not lowly new copywriters. not usually.

only when some copy corrections had to be made and the superior beings who were in communion with the mysterious machines needed that pointless thing called copy changed, and they wouldn't deign to do such menial tasks, were writers given access. of course, you had to take your shoes off before entering this hallowed precinct. it's a miracle we weren't barred from exhaling.

i walked in, i remember, and the boss of the mac room with his usual surly expression, nodded towards a tiny computer in the corner, next to one of the splendid large ones with magical colours on the screen. it was a small but tall machine, not the usual rectangular shape, horizontal longer than vertical. was the other way round. i was told to switch it on, i dutifully must have.

the screen came on... grey. then a little computer appeared on it. a line drawing. a word popped up. hi.

a computer had just greeted me. not a computer. no. a mac.

why do i remember this so well? did i break into a smile? that first meeting with the mac? it was a a mac se i think, just read se means "system expansion". or was it a compact macintosh classic? whatever it was, that computer spoke to me and smiled. no press f1, press f2, and blinking green cursor.

mr jobs was not even at apple at the time. forced out and in exile practically. but his thoughts, how do you banish those? once they're out, they're out, and influencing someone, somewhere... certainly the mac design engineers.

later he'd return to apple, play his own games, and save the company, take it to unbelievable financial heights... trillion would enter the corporate jargon and ambition. but by then i'd read insanely great, a gift from my husband, because ever since that hi from a computer i'd been muttering about this man called steve jobs. 

and i don't really care about corporate men. the only other one i'd found interesting was akio morita, because sony was the first tv i'd seen, and my father had bought a sony record player back in 1974 with much joy, also given my brothers and me a sony cassette player each for he was convinced if we taped our lessons and heard them as we read, we'd absorb information better, it would make for more thorough studying. then there was the walkman. so when mr morita's made in japan came out during those initial days of books by not authors but company executives, i did read it, and enjoyed it a lot. but i didn't go on about him. about steve jobs i did. so jacob got me that book.

i don't remember exact words or moments, but while reading insanely great i felt a thrill that stayed on. someone who thinks of what's to come. and doesn't let anything get in the way of it. certainly not the usual tings that businesses apply to gauge a situation, read a market, plan the next.

a man with an instinct and a cocky crazy faith in himself. hard to restrain, hard to perhaps even like.

in later browsings, i read somewhere, he dated two women at once and would ask his friends whom should he go with, the looker or the other one. think he went with the latter and was happy too. there was of course lisa, the computer named after the daughter with whom he hardly had a relationship till much later. there was the experimenting with drugs, even the not at all enamoured of india side, and i am touchy about that. yes, a flawed man... as perhaps we all are.

but that other side of him. those thoughts of his. that looked straight at what is to come. not burdened by memory or tradition, almost crystal gazing. i can't stop my heartbeats from picking up pace when i think of this.

and where he took it. and how.

we moved to singapore in november 1997, and i started working with an ad agency soon after that. in 1999, i left my job and went to jordan for a six month assignment. on my return, i joined the singapore agency again. when i walked into my office, there was this computer sitting on my desk, which looked nothing like a computer. it was a cross between a lozenge and a spaceship. colourful, translucent, snazzy, futuristic, asking me to bite into it and zoom off into outer space with spock and scotty. it was the first imac, mine was in teal green, a hand me down from my boss. this was steve jobs's first computer after his return to apple.

2001 onwards came one after another things that would change our lives, literally forever. not just computers, every time a new idea. itunes, ipod, iphone... he was reshaping apple for the next century, he seemed to know where he would take it – not just the company, the future. 

no one might have gone there before. first officer spock may not be at hand, but a man who was difficult to work with, who wasn't even an engineer, who didn't create technology, who was accused of stealing (how many times i've heard the gui or icon was not his idea, he saw it at xerox, he filched it... ok, but who, who, who saw its use, its possibilities, its place in our lives, i feel like screaming), who was accused of making too expensive everything, who made things look unnecessarily good, who had dropped out of college, who was gimmicky, whose desk was really messy (perhaps his thoughts even?)... and who was no one's ideal candidate for messiah or changer of our world, he went ahead and did it anyway.

i think of his last invention, the iphone. look what it's made possible.

from looking up recipes, to playing games, to keeping an eye on the child at home, to searching up information, to paying bills, banking, chatting, showing off, dating, doodling, brooding, calling cabs, checking time, reading the market, farmers get links to markets on their phones, politicians persuade voters through social media, migrant labourers speak to their family as and when they please, children away from home – in the same city or on another continent – keep in touch all the time (when my father went to toronto to study back in 1952, think he made two or three phone calls home in those three years; when i came to singapore in 1997, i paid hundreds of dollars on phone calls every month, now my daughter is in london, and we chat when we like for free, just the time difference in the way of things), tv correspondents cover news on specially engineered phone, photographs fly across cyber space on instagram... isn't the phone in every interface, in every act of ours?

the smartphone crosses barriers we've never dreamed of crossing before.

without that iphone, would there be this now so familiar word, app? and all that apps do and we do with them? akio morita made music mobile. steve jobs perhaps knew the power of that mobility. he took a phone and made it something scotty would be in charge of in spaceship enterprise. oh, you can also make phone calls with it.

things he conceived of were not just for the "higher" or niche needs, nor just for the rich and the famous. they were for everyone, each one of us. many may not be able to afford an iphone, but once the idea was realised, manufacturers with cheaper options were bound to come along. and of course they did. 

he made this esoteric and dare i say unpretty looking realm of information and its technology into an easy cool thing, meant for everyone, within reach, refreshing, like coca-cola. actually , much more... part of us.

one man's way of thinking, and an entire species's today and tomorrow are different. changed the course of things i keep thinking. in ways not yet fully known or understood.

just five years older than me. died at 55, having done what he did. i miss him. sometimes with a great long sigh.

wonder what he would have done next. i keep the iphone 5, the last phone he launched with that black turtleneck and blue jeans look, because it was his last. three years after i bought it, the battery started giving trouble, i took it to the shop. sorry, they said, this model had a problem, so we are replacing the batteries for free. yesterday, i noticed again the battery was working just fine.

my thoughts are all over the place, reflected in the writing.

think of it as notes.

sometimes there's more honesty at this level of writing.

but why a saree for mr jobs? maybe because i missed him just now and since i am wearing a saree this evening, my friday saree, why not for him? also, the other day i read, the jacqard loom invented in 1801 by joseph jacqard, is the first machine to use punch cards to instruct a machine to do certain tasks. this knowhow would later be used in the development of computers. i love handloom and resist overuse of jacquard looms, but they have brought a lot of ease and economy to fabric, even saree, weaving.

so, which saree? i am reminded of his think different campaign. the commercial with black and white pictures of remarkable men and women who changed our world. he insisted on the black and white, think he had many of their shots in his room. 

i have this patola in b/w. it must be the one.

here's to you, mr jobs...

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. sarees tell stories | black and white classic ikat saree from bandhej, bangalore, bought around 2008.

 

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