The Hindu Business Line : Homemade fashions

Most Indians above the age of 30 would remember the sewing machine, kept in a corner of their parents' bedroom. It was symbolic of their mother's life beyond the kitchen. A window to the possibility that she could perhaps escape from her domestic responsibilities, and look for fame and fortune among her neighbours.

The sewing machine was a part of the woman's dowry. It brought together two of the homemaker's desirable qualities — craft and frugality. Craft because she was expected to be the keeper of the aesthetic flame, through the fashioning of tablecloths, napkins, curtains, blouses, and petticoats. Frugality, because all this did not have to be made by the tailor, and money was saved for more important things such as books for the children and petrol for the family scooter.

My mother, like many other women of her times, and those of the more recent, did not know how to operate the damn thing at the time she was married. But the sewing machine, complete with its wooden cover (and a lace one, on top) beckoned, asking her to learn. So off she went, the shy bride stepping out of home for her first sewing lessons, to a neighbouring auntie's home. Or it was grandma, the veteran of a hundred blouses, who played willing teacher. In a few weeks, the first straight edges of the handkerchief emerged from the machine. Proudly embroidered with the initials of the family name, coyly shown to her husband, `See, I made it for you'. Handkerchief today, pajamas tomorrow.

There were two types of sewing machines, the hand-operated one, and the foot-powered one. It was once anathema for the woman to sit on a chair. Social norms allowed only the men to sit on chairs. The 10-kg machine was hefted onto the bed by a man-servant, and the lady sat cross-legged with her bales of cloth and scissors beside her, as also the carved wooden box (or the old tin box that once held candy) containing multicoloured threads and buttons. The foot-operated machine, on the other hand, reduced her labour, and enhanced her status, simply by allowing her to sit on a cushioned stool. Maybe it was a subtle ploy by her parents. Being rich enough to afford such a sewing machine, they knew that its mode of use would, quite literally, lift their daughter up in her new family.

As the years went on, her creativity blossomed. She was now able to stitch a perfect circle, and the scalloped hems of her petticoats were evidence of her deftness. The afternoons, in the absence of TV soap opera, filled up with the rhythmic clatter of the spindle. The living room overflowed with her creations, and her mother-in-law began showing off her creations to the neighbours and visiting relatives. As she basked in the praise, a thought began to cross her mind: `Can I profit from my skill? Can I start stitching clothes for my neighbours, not the ordinary kind but the more flowery, elaborate stuff that would enable them to see me as a designer, not just a domestic seamstress?'

For most women, it remained just a dream, wishful thinking, their creativity nipped in the bud by patriarchy. Money is to be made by the men, let it stay that way. Let creativity remain confined within the domain of the family.

And so it did. The young bride turned into an arthritic, bespectacled grandma. She could no longer thread the needle, and a grandchild would happily do it for her. But the tea-cosies, curtains and pillow-covers she had fashioned were still the talking point in every family gathering.

Is it all nostalgia?

We might be tempted to believe so. But recently, I visited a family in Pune, and there it was. Not gathering dust in some corner, but evidently in use. I lifted the cover, and the needles were shiny and the spindles greased with machine oil (a bottle of which rested on the window sill). There were enough sofa covers, TV covers and homemade cushions around to convince me. I was reminded of the sight of a newly married couple getting into an auto-rickshaw at Varanasi railway station, with new bags and a shiny Usha sewing machine, merely a year ago.

Sewing machine manufacturers have started offering sew-it-yourself patterns printed in full size, making it simple to trace, cut and sew. Multiple styles are provided, and so, users can design six trendy outfits from a single pattern sheet. Of course, these are designs created by the National Institute of Fashion Technology for added fashion credibility!

The upper classes might be shopping for brand-name apparel and furnishings at the shiny new malls. But for middle-class India, the sewing machine remains a stolid anchor of domesticity, its mastery holding out hope for the woman who looks outside home.