Unequal music

As a student at Ahmedabad’s National Institute of Design (NID), I joined a birdwatching group. It was the first time I saw Baya weavers making nests between tall rushes at the end of the grounds. Bayas are known to make up to 500 trips for a nest. With no one to disturb them, they flew to and fro, bringing fine stalks of grass to weave their retort-shaped nests. We watched silently, shushing each other. In those days, stepping into the institute’s textile department, it was not unusual to find students and faculty weaving at looms. There was no reason to think handloom might peter out, just as there was never a thought that the weaverbird might stop building its nest. Yet, time has spared neither — weavers of the avian and human kind are steadily losing ground, and the looms have fallen silent. Like some Bayas that somehow manage to ferret out three stalks of tall grass to continue building nests, a few humans find ways to keep weaving.

In the light-filled airy space of the Craft Education and Research Centre at Kalakshetra, Chennai, a couple weave a Korvai sari. It is fascinating to watch. She works on the short border at one end and he works across the warp to cover the main width of the sari and the other border. He is faster and stronger, and she diminutive. Once in a while she gets off her perch to go and spin more bobbins and he applies silk glue on the finished portions. Korvai means “to sync” and they keep pace together, like two piano players performing a duet, each concentrating on a set of keys but keeping the rhythm. Their symphony is a sari. “You say there are fewer weavers by the hour, but from where I come, each year one more weaver joins,” says PL Banumurthi, the foreman. “Nothing could be better than a traditional weaver’s life. He comfortably sits in his own space, with an eye on his children, wife and elders. He doesn’t have to rush back from work, anxious to complete some errand that was not possible during the day. He has everything he needs within the space of his home.”

Banumurthi grew up in Durgam Gramam, a village located between Arani and Vellore. In Class IX, when his mother died leaving behind five children, he dropped out of school to take her place as a weaver. By 15, he was adept at weaving. Children were often involved in pre-loom activities in the traditional setting. “You have to inculcate these skills early. I would be asked to fetch bobbins or spin the thread... There is nothing wrong in a child helping the household, yet weavers today fear this. They do not want their children to weave.”

It is a male weaverbird that makes the nest, and it is usually a man who does the bulk of weaving. There are 4,000 threads in the warp being prepared by a weaver at the Centre. Banumurthi says weaving is the ideal exercise for the human body and he recommends starting before sunrise. “Like going for a brisk walk! The weaving done from five to eight in the morning is the maximum one can can achieve, more than what is possible in an entire morning until lunchtime.”

In the early morning, the loom is on its best behaviour and moves without fits and starts. As the day wears on and the heat sets in, the loom slows and becomes crankier. In the past, weavers bought a ‘Dobby box’ from Salem with which the threads could be directed to make simple patterns for the sari border. With the invention of the Jacquard loom, which uses a punch card to read patterns, weavers could make more complicated designs of paisleys and flowers. Banumurthi designed a korvai loom by integrating several processes into an automated system with which one person can weave an entire sari in two days. This work fetched him the National Innovation Foundation award in 2007.

At the Crafts Council of India’s annual meet, Banumurthi spoke earnestly that weavers were no longer disciplined enough to wake early and weave. Many weavers stood up and shouted in protest: they wanted their leisure and to not be tied to the loom. The common desire today is to get work done quicker and make life easier. Ultimately, however, there is no easy bargain, only a balance of trades and time. By dissipating the ecology of weaving, we lose the natural harmony of community and craft. There is no equal music.

Sujatha Shankar Kumar is a Chennai-based writer and photographer

COMMENT NOW