Simple yet sublime

For all the advances in fashion technology and garment design, the sari is still unsurpassed in the way it combines utter simplicity with almost limitless scope for innovation.

Just consider: there’s not a stitch to keep all those yards in place. And depending only on how you wear it, the same folds can fall gracefully, or bunch up frumpily.

As you turn the pages of Rta Kapur Chishti’s Saris: Tradition And Beyond — which incidentally presents, with illustrations, 108 ways of draping the sari — you’ll understand just why the garment holds such fascination, and has managed to hold its own despite umpteen obituaries mourning its rumoured demise.

This book is the fruit of Chishti’s travels — starting in the 1980s and spread out over 20 years — through the weaver settlements in India’s 15 sari-producing states. Chishti chronicles the experiences of the weavers’ families, documents the mind-boggling array of sari designs, and describes the socio-economic dynamics of the industry today.

Weaving a sari isn’t just a matter of livelihood for a community. In many states, the sari is the cultural glue that binds the people together.

In Chhattisgarh, for example, the coarse cotton sari reflects the vibrant, colourful, geometric tribal designs on people’s homes. Chishti observes how a people’s homes, pottery, and textiles can speak the same language. The famous Bangalore and Mysore silks, on the other hand, exhibit an earnest desire to weave motifs of temple sculpture into their saris.

The history of the sari in each state, when seen in the context of its place in the present, reveals the journey of one garment through time.

In Goa, the Portuguese banned sari-weaving for 200 years in order to promote the sale of imports. However, many weavers went underground, and wove saris in hidden basements. More than 460 looms operated in hide-outs. Chishti met one such weaver, Anton Rasquinha, in the late 1980s.

Then 85, Rasquinha weaved zealously despite being well-off and in no need of the income. But he refused Chishti’s request to weave samples of saris long forgotten, citing pending orders he couldn’t handle. But Chishti records his wry observation that the sari which flourished under the ban, now perishes in freedom.

Weavers in other states have similar stories, though they’re not all as busy as Rasquinha. Chishti relates how several elderly weavers in Karnataka were wary of sharing information on old patterns, fearing that their younger weavers who now work on power looms would feel cheated.

Ironically enough, though skill levels seem to have declined, Maharashtra is perhaps the only state where the handlooms still pose a threat to the power loom owners.

The reason seems to be the constant reinvention of limited designs. Several weavers who took up the author’s production orders were paid to drop them or were baited with better offers — a clear indication of the insecurity amongst power looms owners and the fear that a traditional weaver may find his way to the modern market and command his worth.

Interestingly, Chishti also demonstrates how the sari offers insights into the anxieties of the people who weave and wear it. In Kerala, the weavers appeared reserved and unwilling to speak of what they called “very limited pattern elements.”

Actually, this unwillingness was more a reflection of their dilemma in a market where, without compromising on their traditional minimalist design that gives their saris a unique identity, they have to compete with the far more flamboyantly coloured saris from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu’s saris have “colour all over,” they say. In comparison, Kerala’s predominantly white drapes are at most sprinkled or dip-dyed in turmeric or saffron-tinted water, that too, on auspicious occasions such as marriage or festivals.

The way a sari is woven also tells tales about a state’s culture. In Andhra and Karnataka, observes Chishti, motifs, materials and layouts are freely mixed, while in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the colours, contrasts, inlaying and combinations follow a certain pattern, “playing within strictly drawn lines,” as the book puts it. The Tamils follow a similar order while drawing the kolam — a rangoli or floor pattern. First a dotted grid is drawn and with that as a base, flowing lines are interwoven within.

Strangely enough, these differences in design, materials and motifs also serve to highlight how the sari brings people together. In Madhya Pradesh, the patterns worn by Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians are so similar that it is difficult to tell them apart.

More than 90% of the designs reproduced in this lushly illustrated book have been recreated by the weavers. At the famous weaving centres of Chanderi, Maheshwar and Bilaspur, weavers brought out their collections and drew old, nearly extinct border patterns with shaky hands. Chishti got them to weave more than 500 of those patterns and has documented them in Saris.

Writes Chishti, “Women in Jhansi rode horses and swam in rivers with their sari tucked between the legs like an unstitched pair of shorts.” Flipping through this book, one can’t help feeling that the modern Indian woman hasn’t managed to get as much out of the sari as those women in Jhansi did.