floating, falling, wafting, holding, keeping memories, parkouring through time, sarees are such splendid things. are you wearing one today?
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.
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photos credit ferolyn fernandez
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.
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. | |||
| chanderi in madhya pradesh where gossamer light cotton and silk are woven by hand |
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| bishnupur in bankura, west bengal, produces rich, soft silk. the black saree is a bishnupuri silk embroidered by artisans based near kolkata. |
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.
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| map courtesy uploader |
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he loved vintage cars. every morning, practically, he'd come to look at his collection, which used to be kept in a garage built on land rented from my family. he always wore pristine, brilliant white pajamas and a flowing crisp kurta, his hair would be neatly brushed and the most pleasant smile would appear on his face if he happened to spot you or any of your elders.
"namashkar!" he'd greet in a low amicable tone, as he raised his hands high before him, palms joined. he'd let you go up close to his cars, even touch a shiny collectible surface if you wished to. he let some of us sit in one of his priceless automobiles once. he was the best tenant one could have and the most polite and decent man.
given the ironies of life, it really shouldn't have surprised anyone when he turned out to be not quite the man you thought he was. but all that came later.
much after his wife and he had gifted me my first chanderi saree. it was for my wedding and they'd chosen well. on a base of deep purple – it had a tinge of mocha brown in it – sat delicately woven dull gold motifs and an elegant restrained border in the same matte gold zari. the fabric was of the finest quality.
that perfect gossamer of chanderi, the wafting gauziness of it all... almost like a dream the fall. like a veil through which you look at memory.
i fussed endlessly about wearing the saree, even though i loved it. but when would i ever be thin enough to feel confident in a material so sheer? the struggle went on, the weight stayed put. i think i finally surrendered to temptation and wore the saree once, maybe twice. in time, it frayed and i had to let it go.
but a chanderi that belonged to my grandmother i couldn't throw away, even when it was in shreds. its pink is bright and playful, the contrasting blue border highlights the character of the main colour. intricate motifs in zari and a darker shade of pink traipse across the saree, its solid gold border shimmers.
as it tore in my hands, a world seemed to shift out of focus. i kept the borders, bits of the pink at the edges. some day, i think, some day, i'll go to chanderi and get someone to make a saree like that for me.
for centuries, possibly beginning in the eleventh – or who knows, maybe even earlier... or later – this delightful fabric of cotton and zari, and later silk, has been woven in the town of chanderi.
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| picture courtesy uploader |
situated between malwa and bundelkhand in central india, chanderi was part of the trade routes and became an important military outpost. it was fought over and ruled by many kings and conquerors. babur, allaudin khilji, and the rajputs, among them.
it's mentioned in ibn batuta's travelogues, he went there in 1342, apparently. wonder if he wrote about the weavers and their fine product?
the lightweight cotton with its sheer transparency always startles me.
something about its texture.
hold it up and look through, a maze of patterns form on the threads, an optical illusion created by weave and play of light on it perhaps. and though chanderi was traditionally made with cotton only, it's never bothered to look anything but luxurious.
am talking of the real ones, not the fakes that have overtaken the market. there are a few designers and also shops like fabindia, that are getting quite serious about reviving and keeping alive the looms of chanderi. maybe fakes have their uses...
and now that i think, had the man in white been a good guy all the way, something would have certainly gone missing from my recollections of chanderi. when the twist in that tale came and he behaved in a way no one could have imagined, i raved and ranted, but i kept the saree.
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sarees tell stories | yellow chanderi from touch of class paithani, grey and silver chanderi from an exhibition in singapore, both bought in 2014.
posted this on writersbrew.com on august 5, 2016
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what absolute fun to wear a kasavu saree at a wedding in kerala, the land of kasavu. it was december 2018, a dear school friend's daughter got married, for the haldi ceremony, the dress code was traditional south indian. if you'd like to find out more about these sarees, here's a saree from kerala.
