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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