Dream weave

This post has been due from a long, long time. Whenever I take to work on this post, I fall short of words. Perhaps words don't do justice to the things you experience when you are with the weavers. The humble people that they are, they don't realize that the skills they have is extremely beautiful and rare. What started as a tradition of making clothes, of being self sufficient, has become a struggle for survival.

You walk into their humble homes and see the spools laid out in the front, the yarns spread out in the sun, the black cotton kept to dry. The pit loom covers most of the space of their living room, threads hanging from the sledges, a small television to keep the family entertained. The weaving requires more than just one weaver, the whole family lends a hand from start to finish. This art of weaving and making fabrics completely by hand is looked down upon in their own village. It is considered a less of a job. The struggle is seen in their faces. They have lost the joy in weaving, it seems. It is more of a necessity than passion. This I think may have happened gradually over the years, when the demand became lesser and lesser, when the copies of powerloom started taking over, when the co-operative societies are not able to furnish the money needed. Those still weaving are quite old I observe. They themselves do not want their kids to continue this as they know the struggle is real.

When you look at the beautiful fabrics in bright, rich colours, you want to tell them to keep making them for there are people who love it, that they are keeping up a heritage, they are making this world a better place and that their wrinkled hands are making art. And that itself is magical.

Photographs by Arvind Sridhar