an evening of light and turmeric stains

 
it must have been cold that morning. december is usually chilly in kolkata. i couldn't have been looking forward to the prospect of water being poured on me, that too after a generous amount of turmeric paste had been rubbed on my face, neck, arms, and feet.

as my eyes fell on a saree on the shelf in the cupboard and i felt that familiar feeling "this is it," i thought of that morning thirty-five years ago. i was getting married that day. the rituals had started early, the first ceremony was at the break of dawn. i was also not supposed to eat anything the entire day, and perhaps i hadn't. around 10 or 11am was the gaye holud. literally, "turmeric on the body," or the turmeric ceremony.

gaye holud is such an inalienable part of the bengali wedding, i'd not wondered about its origins or significance ever. i knew it had something to do with making the bride and the bridegroom look more beautiful on this day. raw turmeric is said to fortify the skin and also make it glow.

the ceremony is one of the main women's customs or "stree achar" of the wedding. so only women attend and execute the rituals. as the bride, you wear a simple white cotton saree with red border usually, a thin cotton towel or "gamchha" over your shoulders, and sit on the "pide," the low wooden platform, on the floor.

cousins and aunts walk around you in a circle first, gleefully ululating; they carry the bowl of turmeric paste and little fat "ghoti" or pitchers of water. the paste consists mainly of ground turmeric and a bit of milk and mustard oil. after going around you a few times, they settle down and apply liberal quantities of the earthy yellow paste on you, especially your face; and finally, the water is poured on your head. it's a ritual bath i guess. nobody cares it's december, you might catch a cold or that you're shivering. they are too busy smearing turmeric on each other, having fun, and looking forward to the big lunch ahead.

we have many such "stree aachar" associated with weddings, and just as i start smiling about that, i remember it's only married women that can be part of these customs. not widows, not unmarried women. in this too, our patriarchal mindset is fully honoured. usually, the mother puts the turmeric on the bride first, my mother would not have taken part in the ceremony as my father had passed away six years earlier, i feel a sadness even now when i think of that.

both the bridegroom and the bride have gaye holud. the turmeric paste for the bride comes from the bridegroom's home. after his gaye holud, a little bit of paste that had been smeared on him is mixed with the paste for the bride, and this is carried along with the "gaye holuder tottwo" or the gaye holud trousseau, to the bride's home.

the saree i was looking at had come in the tottwo that december morning.

outside, the evening grew darker. i pulled the saree out gingerly, since it was thirty-five years old at least, it's yarn might be worn already. i'd chosen the saree, along with everything else, the shoes, bags, sweets, and other things, for the tottwo. my husband is jewish, our marriage was registered under the special marriages act, it was not a religious wedding. however, we had decided to observe all the non-religious customs associated with our weddings on both sides. and so the gaye holuder tottwo.

i'd had fun shopping for the sarees. this one was a south indian silk, in a shot colour, a mix of bronze and a deep blue. the border had stripes of zaree, i must have thought it looked trendy. it was possibly a kanjeevaram, not a very heavy silk though, nor terribly expensive. did i buy it from vashdev at triangular park, i wondered as i caught hold of a part of the saree with both hands and tugged sharply.

i was sure it would tear. rend. but nothing happened.

i tugged again, quite viciously. the fabric stayed intact.

many of my tottwo sarees – and there are two such trousseaus, one from the bridegroom's side and one from the bride's – have gone over the years. fallen apart, frayed. each time it has hurt, i've felt a rip in some unmappable part of me, a memory lingered: i'd worn the saree there or i'd done this when i was wearing it, or i'd gone with my mother to buy it the day i was...

i looked at the saree in my hands. the bronze glimmered. turmeric stains are hard to wash off... from your hands, from your memory. a quiet happiness came over me. this not too thick, not that costly saree had decided to stay the course. it had not got rattled by time and its demands, the many moves across five cities, two countries, ten homes, and all the mistakes of a not too careful or astute wearer. it still held its sheen and looked ready to take on what came its way. it felt like a part of a promise... one we make without knowing what's in store for us but believing we can keep it, even if we are not too perfect, nor too strong. 

it was diwali evening, i'd been scanning the shelves of my cupboard for a saree to wear and overdress a bit in, light my row of lamps, catch an old happy feeling in the way i like to these days. i'd found the saree, and it was brilliantly lit.

 

diwali pictures courtesy my daughter @blinkrejects on instagram

 

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sarees tell stories | bronze and deep blue south indian silk, possibly kanjeevaram, bought in kolkata, vashdev tolaram most likely, 1985.

 

 

in the southern state of tamil nadu, in kanchipuram, the wondrous kanjeevaram is made on handlooms. map courtesy uploader.

 

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a tale of two sarees

no, it's not the same saree. am still giggling at how i landed up getting two sarees that are, no, no, not the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it was a mistake. wasn't very clear whose, mine or the shop's. but a mistake it definitely was. i'd seen this beautiful saree on instagram, which is now like a shopping mall for sarees or anything. it was a striking mustard saree with an inky purple and a hot pink asymmetric ganga-jamuna border. a gadwal in silk with the trademark kuttu weave at the borders and pallu. abhihaara had posted it. 

 

based in hyderabad, abhihaara social enterprise is a shop you go to when you want the real thing and where you know the weaver gets a fair deal. they work directly with women weavers and produce authentic cotton and silk waeves of andhra pradesh.

 

i wanted that mustard saree. 

 

they took my order and after a couple of months the saree arrived. i opened the dhl package, highly excited, all set to see a vibrant mustard saree tumble out. the saree had been rolled, not folded. i unrolled it with impatient fingers, waiting to see the mustard. waiting to see the musta...

 

yellow and green checks appeared out of nowhere. what? i looked at the borders. the colours were perfect. so what was this checked body of the saree? that too in green and yellow? i felt my heart begin to sink. it was such a gamble, shopping online.

 

instantly, i whatsapped abhihaara. there had been a mistake, the wrong saree had been sent. i helpfully added some pictures. abhihaara replied, well this was the saree i'd ordered. i sent them the instagram picture based on which i'd ordered. yes, that was the saree... it looked like that when shot out in the open in natural sunlight.

 

really? i was astonished. had i seen it wrong?

 

anyway, in the course of this to and fro of messages and looking at the green and yellow checked saree again and again, i began to like it. a lot. all those colours... should have clashed, but somehow didn't. looked unusual and elegant instead. tell you, colour matching is magic, some people just know how it's done.

 

even as i grew enamoured of this gadwal, a part of me chanted, mustard mustard mustard. so i requested abhihaara to make me one without any checks, in the kind of colour the saree in their instagram post had. 

 

the second saree came a couple of weeks ago. it was a greenish mustard. difficult to define colour. nothing predictable about these gadwals really.

 

so now i am the happy owner of these almost identical sarees. sometimes mistakes can lead to wonderful things. 

 

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

 

 

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gadwals are woven in telengana in the south of india. map courtesy uploader.

 

photos credit estair auhona robbins

time for khadi

 

 

 

 

the two of us donned khadi sarees and did a happy photo shoot. we were remembering an incredible man and all that he did so we today can be us. to mohandas karamchand gandhi and his ingenious ideas to oppose and take down the oppressor. 

a thing for khadi

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photos credit ferolyn fernandez

a thing for khadi

 

 

then he said "hey ram!" and he died. every time i heard that as a child i was captivated. a funny kind of beauty in that image. a pristine clean thing, nothing could taint it. complications are for adults perhaps.

the back gate of my grandparents' home in delhi would take us down a narrow lane to the back gate of birla house. this is where gandhi ji used to live, and where he died on a winter evening twelve years before i was born. on our long holidays in delhi, we'd go practically every day to play in the beautiful grounds of birla house, which was open to the public. and i'd walk up each time to the canopy in the middle of the sprawling lawn, where the little pedestal stood with the words "hey ram" written in hindi, and feel an intense sadness. that beauty.

i'd make my mother tell me the story of what happened there again and again. nathuram godse was just a name, but gandhi ji was this brave, magnificent man in a simple dhoti who stood there and took the bullet. after which he didn't scream and yell and shout and no one called an ambulance, there was no noise, no fear.

just a man folding his hands. two words. and he was gone.

perhaps the truth is a bit different, but that never mattered. the picture got etched along with the feeling.

of course, in minutes i'd be ready to run around and play. a sense of freedom in birla house and a moment caught. it felt like history.

can't say i fell in love with khadi because of that memory though, or maybe it did add something to my fascination. but mainly it was thanks to ravi uncle, a dear friend of my mother's brother, that i decided khadi was it. especially khadi kurtas. in his "guru" kurtas with high collar, he'd come out of his white beetle, a tallish man in a smallish weird looking car. again a picture that stays; ravi uncle looked particularly handsome in a bright pink kurta. 

i started wearing khadi kurtas i think when i was around seventeen. that pink, how i searched for it and i found it too. over time, i fell completely in love with this hand spun, hand woven fabric. every year around gandhi jayanti, 2 october, there'd be a massive 35% (i think that was it) discount offered by the khadi gram udyog, i'd buy tonnes of fabric and kurtas... i started wearing the slim smart aligarhi pyjamas... which of course had to had to be in rugged white. 

khadi, or khaddar as the cloth is called, to me was all about the most beautiful shades of colour, the most brilliant whites, the most simple and honest touch of fabric... no nonsense, real, and splendidly cool. perhaps the fact that the whole idea of khadi was one that was about everyone, about india, about self reliance, about independence, also attracted me. there was a sense of revolution in it. 

but really, the fabric itself is beautiful, no denying that. and the delightful range of shades and texture... you can never get bored, also perhaps never run out of money. though of course, your neighbourhood khadi bhandar man at the crossing of rash behari avenue and monohar pukur road will try his utmost to make the latter happen. 

i wore khadi kurtas, pyjamas, shalwars, jackets, scarves, carried khadi handkerchiefs... however, i never came across a khadi saree. never even thought about it. i was in calcutta a few years ago when i happened to drop in at kanishka, one of the first boutiques that opened in the city back in the seventies. they are well known for their block prints and handloom sarees. an exhibition was on, the owner's son had designed a series of khadi sarees my cousin told me.

i can't explain how wonderful it felt to see a saree which was considered to be pure khadi... i bought two. the brown one is made of hand spun cotton and mooga (a wild silk found only in the state of assam and nowhere else in the world if i'm not wrong); while the blue one is in cotton, the yarn not too fine, a raw edgy feel to it. both were naturally hand woven. 

on a visit to delhi recently, i took my daughter to birla house. they call it something else now, but the place was just the way i remember it. the lawn was green and vast, not a matter of it looking smaller now that i was no longer a child. that pedestal with the "hey ram" sat where it always had. the air felt unsullied and calm. for the first time, i stepped into the building... the house where gandhi ji spent the last days of his life.

it's a museum now. there was gandhi ji's room with its sparse uncluttered look, just a few things. among them, his spinning wheel. his charkha. 

to have thought of staking independence through a thread, of asserting self reliance by spinning and weaving... just a piece of cloth, to turn it into a quiet weapon against oppression and injustice... i stood for a long while looking at the small contraption.

on a wall hung a picture of sardar patel and gandhi ji... before going to his prayer session that evening of 30 january 1948, he met sardar patel, a man who i believe was devoted to bapu. that would be gandhi ji's last official meeting. i know very little about sardar patel, but there is something arresting, thrilling about him; a man who was strong, straight speaking, who was what he was and whose negotiation skills were formidable to say the least. 

there was a small shop outside, selling khadi, got a fine silk in green for my daughter there. hard to describe the happiness i felt watching her walk around the grounds.

 wrote this on 12 january, 2016.

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sarees tell stories | two khadi cottons from kanishka, hindustan road, kolkata, bought around 2010. 

 

 

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apple jam and lime green or a saree (or two) in the time social distancing

 

social distancing. what a funny sounding coinage. no music in it, no vibe, almost cloddish. yet, it will perhaps save the human race.

it's strange to write that last sentence without there being a trace of exaggeration in it. 

anyway, what do you do when it's all about social undistancing? when it's time to gather, to celebrate, to come close? time to bring to mind again events and forces that in fact helped create human societies, established the need for bonding, for being together, for trusting each other? time for apple jam?

this year rosh hashanah, the jewish new year, fell on 18th to 20th of september, and we were eight months and more deep in the covid world.

there would be no rosh hashanah gatherings of family and friends around large tables with extra chairs crushing against each other to accommodate everyone, platters of festive food spilling over, and blessings being said with much gusto and joy over dates, long beans, chives, pumpkin, apple jam, pomegranates, and more. 

the sweet challah bread of new year that would be dipped in honey instead of salt, would not be passed around to the twenty, thirty, fifty people in the room.

this year, in singapore, we are allowed to have only five guests. 

we had a quiet rosh hashanah at home, just the four of us. i am not too good with crowds and big parties, so a part of me must have been quite happy, and yet, i missed the voices and the feeling of people around me. 

so and so would have shouted out that word during the saying of this prayer. such and such would have guffawed loudly when that was said. the children would rush and queue up for the food, the adults would feign patience. for the nth time the same tale would be told and we'd laugh.

laugh we did even this year, and tried to bridge the distance in our minds. the apple jam turned out perfect, a beautiful recipe from a lady i'll never forget. the honey cake was a bit dry but tasty, our first try. i decided i had to make something new and truly iraqi jewish, so kubbah was attempted. the dumplings of semolina and rice flour with chicken mince stuffing were a little hard, but the three other people at the table seemed not to care. 

 

like every year, i spent a lot of time pondering the sarees i'd wear on the first and second nights of rosh hashanah. 

i chose a filmy and buoyant lime green chanderi for the first night, which i'd found thanks to social media (another strange coinage), namely whatsapp, at ayaz bhai's shop in the town of chanderi in madhya pradesh. 

chanderi, with that zingy happy sound, was an important town in the trade routes spreading across india and beyond in the 11th century, and so wealth grew here, and weaving flourished, this typical gauzy fine fabric... now you see it now you don't. beauty.

on the second night, i'd wear a heavily embroidered black saree made by sarbari dutta, the well known designer, a dear friend of my aunt and uncle's. starting out in her late forties, she brought life and colour and artistry and fun to men's dressing. particularly to the traditional indian look for men which hadn't changed in centuries. embroidered peacocks strutted about dhotis, kurtas were embellished with chain stitched egyptians, minute kañtha work made a staid jacket striking. the black dhoti made an entry. who said dhotis had to be white?

black, she had said, when i requested her to make another saree for me. she had still not started doing women's fashion commercially, an exception for her friends and their saree mad nieces. 

for all the embroidery work, she drew the motifs and stories by hand, each one, right onto the fabric. skilled artisnas would then do the needle work on the drawings. sarbari dutta passed away suddenly a couple of days before rosh hashanah. i wanted to remember her. the saree fell svelte and confident as i wore it.

an ancient unstitched garment and time honoured traditions, they both wrap memories in their fold... and surely even the secrets of making society, of living as humans on this planet, of surviving. 

strange i should think so, for i've never been a great one for traditions, always a little impatient with rituals and customs. the new, what's to come, beckon me. 

but as i took a bite of the syrup-coated apple and the aroma of cardamom got really socially undistanced with my nose, as i felt the lightness of a flippant lime chanderi about me, as we said may our enemies be decimated and may our good deeds be as plentiful as the seeds of a pomegranate, maybe i felt we'll get through this, cloddish coinage notwithstanding.

 

 

wrote this on september 30, 2020.

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sarees tell stories | lime green chanderi from ayaz ansari, facebook page handloom karigar, 2020. black bishnupuri silk by sarbari, around 2009.

 

 

 

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chanderi in madhya pradesh where gossamer light cotton and silk are woven by hand

bishnupur in bankura, west bengal, produces rich, soft silk. the black saree is a bishnupuri silk embroidered by artisans based near kolkata.

 maps courtesy uploaders.

my photos credit ferolyn fernandez

 

 

 

a madhubani saree or two

 

my aunt said, "shall i get a madhubani saree made for you?"

i was intrigued, madhubanis were paintings, weren't they? with endless little lines, geometric figures, krishna, radha, peacocks, flowers, faces with elongated eyes, deer, forest... fine lines and bright colours. how do you make a saree of that?

madhubani pieces are fairly commonplace or at least they used to be. i am not talking of extremely intricate pieces, it's the more basic ones, often in black/green/red and maybe blue that you see in government emporiums, handicraft fairs, even framed in hotels and offices. folk art, found everywhere. i'd never really spared them much thought. they are there, part of the scene, intriguing in a way perhaps but mostly taken for granted, at least by me.

i'd of course not imagined they could have anything to do with something i wore. my aunt, who runs a boutique and often makes wonderful sarees and other things for me, could sense my hesitation over the phone. she decided to take matters in hand and told me she'd get one made and send it across.

a couple of months later the saree arrived. she'd chosen a tussar, the body was a shade of muted red, the border and pallu had been left unbleached, and on that ran detailed madhubani work in black and deep red with kundan sparkling here and there. across almost nine yards went the five-inch wide border and the circular centre piece on the pallu was at least two and a half feet across with additional work along the edges. a fabulous richness about the saree.

madhubani is a district in the north of bihar along the border with nepal. this region was once part of the kingdom of mithila. madhubani art is said to have started thousands of years ago... some say when king janak asked the women of mithila to decorate the palace for his daughter sita's wedding with ram.

initially, the women who gave shape to this art form, painted motifs from daily life on walls, stylising them to give madhubani, or mithila painting, its distinctive look. 

over time, new motifs and figures were added; each thing of course means something and is often symbolic. fish, for instance, signifies fertility and luck, peacocks indicate romantic love... while living in southern bihar, now jharkhand, i remember seeing intricately painted huts in santhal villages. that too was possibly influenced by the work of these folk artists. even now, most madhubani artists are women.

my aunt tells me these sarees are painted in narpati nagar in madhubani district. thick nibs, about twice the size of normal pen nibs, are used to create these patterns. earlier, the ladies used only vegetable dyes, however of late they've switched to commercial colours as they seem to last longer. it takes between two and three months to make the sarees you see here.

i bought the onion pink tussar with madhubani border and pallu in black a couple of years later. two of my friends wanted similar sarees. others said they'd like theirs on crepe for a more swish fall. far away in bihar, possibly living in simple tenements and huts, the women artists were unfazed and came back with exactly what had been asked for.

who are these women i wonder at times. we call this an art form, yet no one knows the names of these creators... true, a few have been recognised and even travelled to other parts of the world to show their work, but that's just a handful of artists. is it just one woman who makes a saree, or do a few of them work together? how do they get this skill? do they have people to pass on their knowledge to? how do they draw with such intensity and sense of proportion… repeating motifs flawlessly; filling and perfecting instinctively. in today’s world, where the word art has us in a tizzy over the price of this painting or that, where art is “investment,” i wonder what $$$ these artists’ work would have commanded if the right marketeer got to it.

in a way, i am glad that's not happened. not everything should be valued only in cold hard cash, especially art. i hope the artists are paid well for their efforts though. 

aunt said, they do madhubani with gold paint these days, i had to ask, "so, where's mine?"

 wrote this on march 6, 2016

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sarees tell stories | madhubani sarees bought around 2008/09 from raya's boutique, 2/1/2 rakhal mukherjee road, kolkata 70025, phone +919874130648.

 

map courtesy uploader

 

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