Making a difference
I
making a difference
Forever working on the warp and weft of Indian handlooms At 84 years, Suraiya Hassan Bose may look frail but she has not lost any of the indomitable spirit with which she has travelled the length of the country studying Indian handloom and handicrafts. If there is one person familiar with handloom in the country, it is Suraiya aapa, as she is fondly known in Hyderabad, her hometown. Once married to Netaji Subhas Bose’s nephew, Aurobindo, she talks to Minal Khona about her life, her influences and her family. Incidentally it was her uncle, Abid Hassan Safrani, who gave India the patriotic catchphrase ‘Jai Hind’ Photographs: Lakshmi Prabala
74
magine having a father who spun khadi in jail after being arrested for supporting the freedom movement. A mother who had gold embroidery done on that very piece of khadi spun inside the jail and wore it as her bridal outfit. Or, growing up in a house in Sultan Bazaar in Hyderabad where Mahatma Gandhi’s influence was all pervading, where British products, including all that they owned, were burnt in a bonfire to support swadeshi goods. Imagine having parents, uncles and aunts who worked and interacted closely with great leaders like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Sarojini Naidu. That, in a nutshell, is where Suraiya Hassan Bose grew up. Her recounting of the days of preIndependence India is like stepping into a history book where well known facts and unknown details come alive. Talking to this diminutive lady about her life’s work gives one a glimpse of life from a bygone era. Born on 17 August 1928, Suraiya Hassan Bose or Suraiya aapa (older sister) as she is respectfully called, her list of achievements and her energy and commitment to her work even today, are nothing short of awe inspiring. Her legacy – in the form of the school she runs and the kalamkari business she set up – will outlive her for sure. But others, like the weaving of the rare himru and mashru fabric, sadly will perish in time to come. She recalls an old Hyderabad that has slipped into history books. She tells me how Hyderabadis were progressive in their thinking, with Hindu-Muslim barriers being non-existent. “My parents had friends who would visit us often. We always addressed them as mamu or chacha and were clueless about their religious affinities. The thought that they belonged to a different religion never crossed our minds,” she says. Her family was part of the freedom struggle and she recalls those days. “My father Badrul Hassan and my uncle Abid Hassan Safrani worked closely with Gandhiji and Sarojini Naidu. My uncle was private secretary to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and was with him until the time he went to Russia. My uncle was asked to return while Netaji went ahead. No one really knows what happened to him after that.” 75
Above right: Suraiaya aapa with her uncle Abid Hassan Safrani Right: Abid Hassan Safrani with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (left) Below: Suraiya aapa with her husband Aurobindo Bose
Netaji’s nieces too came frequently and were friends with the young Suraiya. They came up with the idea of their brother Aurobindo marrying her. Since religious barriers were of no consideration, they got married Her family’s patriotic feelings ran deep. “All the men in my family were sent to Germany for higher education as my grandmother was anti-British. I was educated at the Mehboobia Girls High School. The women in my family all wore khadi. My mother’s wedding outfit was made from the khadi my father had spun when he was in jail,” she reveals. Unthinkable then and now, for the bride of an aristocratic and educated family to do that, but the family was passionate about India and khadi. The history surrounding the Hassan family has touched all their lives. Suraiya aapa’s cousin and partner in her business, Dominic Hassan, reveals interesting anecdotes about his 76
uncle and Netaji. He says, “My uncle had added Safrani to his name based on the saffron colour of the flag of the Indian National Army to express his support for the freedom movement.” It was the same Abid Hassan Safrani who coined the oft-repeated patriotic call of ‘Jai Hind’. “Netaji, the founder of the Indian National Army, wanted a universal greeting for the revolutionaries. My uncle gave it a lot of thought and woke Netaji up at three in the morning. He told Netaji that he had come up with a perfect phrase for the revolutionaries to greet each other in the army. He had coined ‘Jai Hind’ – a shorter version of ‘Jai Hindustan Ki’. Jai means victory and the INA was fighting for the victory of Hindustan, so the phrase was apt. Netaji loved it and had the bugle sounded at four in the morning, when he announced that from then on this would be the standard greeting for all the members of the Indian National Army. The spirit of nationalism and patriotism was all pervasive,” says Dominic. In fact, Nehru concluded his historic ‘freedom at midnight’ speech at the Red Fort with the phrase ‘Jai Hind’, and it is this practice that has been followed by leaders ever since.
Perhaps it is this passion and national pride that Suraiya aapa absorbed as a little girl – one that keeps her motivated even today. Although she admits that as a teenager, she wore more of handloom fabrics than khadi – a habit she retains to this day, wearing only handloom saris. Her father owned the only bookshop then in Hyderabad, the Hyderabad Book Company, that sold books written in English – literary classics and coffee table books on art among others. One shop was in Secunderabad and the other in Abids. As a child she would spend time at the bookshop and read everything that caught her fancy. She recalls reading a book that documented all kinds of Indian fabrics, weaves and embroideries. “I remember browsing through books published by Oxford University Press which had pictures of Indian jewellery and old fabrics. My father also started the Cottage Industries Emporium in Hyderabad where I used to work as a teenager. That is how I got exposed to textiles, weaves and Indian crafts.” It was this exposure which led to her working with Pupul Jayakar. Suraiya aapa had gone to Delhi lo live with her uncle Safranisaab, who was then with the external affairs ministry. She worked with Mridula Sarabhai, Ambalal Sarabhai’s daughter, a social worker who helped in the recovery and rehabilitation of abducted women. Six months after working with Mridula, Suraiya aapa took a visitor from Hamburg University – Maria May – to Hyderabad as she wanted to see all the local textiles. So impressed was Maria with her knowledge of Indian textiles, that she recommended Suraiya aapa to Pupul Jayakar. That is how she got the chance to work with the legendary lady as well as with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Handloom and Handicraft Corporation, which is a part of the State Trading Corporation. This job gave her the chance to learn about handwoven fabrics and textiles on a larger scale as the
corporation worked with weavers from all over India. A decade of opportunities to study textiles and handicrafts and to work closely with weavers from remote villages, was enough to put her on this career path for the rest of her life. “I would study all the fabrics made in remote villages by the weavers. I knew what Siddipet, Warangal, Gadwal, Aurangabad and every district of Andhra Pradesh was making.” It is this knowledge perhaps that compels her to say with authority that the quality of the fabric being woven today has deteriorated, despite government help and a larger clientele. Somewhere along the way, between living and working in Delhi, marriage happened. Since Safranisaab was close to Netaji and his family, members of the leader’s family were frequent visitors to her uncle’s home in Delhi. Netaji’s nieces too came frequently and were friends with the young Suraiya. They came up with the idea of their brother Aurobindo marrying her. Since religious barriers were of no consideration, they got married. The marriage was destined to be a long distance one with Suraiya aapa in Delhi and Aurobindo in Kolkata, where he worked with a labour union. Briefly however, Suraiya aapa did get transferred to the West Bengal capital, where she got the chance to learn about the textiles of Bengal. Some time later, though, an exhibition of Indian textiles in Saudi Arabia and New York saw her back in Delhi. The couple took turns travelling between the cities and this continued till she moved back to Hyderabad after Aurobindo passed away. They never had any children. Returning to Hyderabad and living with her uncle, Suraiya aapa had ten acres of land at her disposal. Those days, in the late 1970s, she remembers, there were paddy fields visible all the way to Mehdipatnam. She decided to set up a farm. “I went to the Agriculture department to get information on how to grow various things. We had labourers and we worked together to set up a farm where we grew everything from several varieties of rice to vegetables, fruits and flowers. We even had cows and buffaloes to supply the milk.” During her stint with farming, Suraiya aapa realised that the children of the farm labourers were unable
to go to school. There was only one government school nearby and the medium of instruction was Telugu. After her uncle passed away, she started a school – the Safrani Memorial School in his memory. Later, she added a science wing – the Aurobindo Bose Science Centre to the school. The school today boasts of 600 students. The medium of education is English and all the children of employees study there free of cost. For the rest of the students, those whose parents can afford it pay the tuition fees, and the ones who can’t due to extreme circumstances are not charged. It is a school for boys and girls, and Suraiya aapa proudly says, “All the children who have cleared their tenth standard exams in the last decade, have passed with a first class. They have all gone on to having good jobs and some are even working abroad.” Today, her residence is in the same complex where the school stands as does her weaving and retail unit in Raidurg, at the crossroads between Mehdipatnam on one side and the road to Gachibowli on the other. It is the same piece of land, only smaller, as some portions were sold, and there is no more farming on the premises. Her love for gardening remains however, with orchids, grapes, papaya, lemon and other exotic plants growing all around as witness to her green thumb. Looking at the haphazard development in the area today, it seems incredible that 30 years ago, this was all agricultural land.
But the mainstay of Suraiya aapa’s work is her revival of dying weaves. As is her work with block printed kalamkari – which can only be made in Machlipatnam, a seaside town of Andhra Pradesh, where the vegetable dyes, in tandem with the sea water, are used with printing blocks to create designs that were once highly sought after by the British and French. Her company, started in 1981 as Deccan Exports, initially exported kalamkari and other Indian weaves and fabrics. A big source of support at that time was John Bissell – the founder of Fabindia. She recalls, “He helped me a lot with setting up my business. Besides buying kalamkari from us, he also introduced me to the Habitat group which bought fabric from us for all their stores worldwide.” Sometime
The women in my family all wore khadi. My mother’s wedding outfit was made from the khadi my father had spun when he was in jail,” she reveals. Unthinkable then and now, for the bride of an aristocratic and educated family to do that, but the family was passionate about India and khadi
77
“Whether it is silk from Gadwal or Paithani from Paithan, the quality is going down. It won’t come to a stop because the government is trying to set up units to keep these arts alive. But due to changing society, with the children not wanting to follow in their parents’ footsteps, I don’t know how long these traditional handlooms will survive”
78
after the death of John Bissell, the export policies changed and Suraiya aapa found it difficult to manage. She then moved on to getting dhurries woven in Warangal even as she set up a loom in her courtyard. At the loom she employed widows and young, uneducated women from the area and she taught them to weave in the different styles available – ikat, Paithani, the rumaal and so on. At the time, Indian fabrics and weaves were being swamped by a polyester wave of cheap and easy to maintain synthetic fabrics. With no government help and entirely self-funded, this business started taking shape. Ikat from Pochampalli in Andhra Pradesh, Paithani from Paithan in Maharashtra, woven with silk and pure gold thread, Jamewar from Kashmir, and the local telia rumaal were woven in her backyard. The rumaal is a 45 inch by 45 inch square piece of cloth, woven in a certain pattern in shades of red, white and black. It used to be worn in two pieces by labourers – one around their waist and one around their heads. However, the jewel in this handloom crown, and what is perhaps Suraiya aapa’s most challenging achievement, is the revival of the himru and mashru weaves. Although both trace their origins to Persia, they found their way into the wardrobes of the Nizams and their begums. The Nizams wore sherwanis made of the himru weave and their wives wore salwars made of mashru. Suraiya aapa’s master weaver Syed Umar joined her after he retired from his earlier place of work. He is perhaps the last living person who knows how to make the graph, or jaala as it is called, before himru can be woven. He says, “These weaves have been in existence since the times of Shah Jahan. Aurangzeb brought it to Aurangabad which was then part of the Deccan. The shahi hukumat – the Nizams – used to wear sherwanis of this fabric.” The fabric comes with motifs – small buttis or intricate vines and flowers and leaves. The more complex the pattern, the longer it takes to make. The weaving is so complicated that it takes a fortnight to set up the graph or the pattern for the cloth to be woven. After that, the girls employed there start weaving, at the pace of
three inches a day. On an average, it takes up to three months to weave a piece big enough to make a sherwani. Today, the fabric is woven only on order and there is a six-month waiting period. “To my knowledge, this is the only himru and mashru weaving unit left in the world,” says Suraiya aapa. No wonder, then, that every time I have visited her place, there have been people from different parts of the world walking around her loom trying to understand the complexity of it all. Umarsaab regrets the fact that though the girls employed there can weave the fabric, none of them have learnt the knack of making the graph – which is the first step. Suraiya appa adds that when Umarsaab stops working, she won’t be able to offer this rare and intricate fabric as part of her ouvre anymore. For now, she continues with the looms. She admits, however that, “Out of the five projects we have, this is the only one making a loss. There is a lot of wastage in threads till the girls learn the technique and get it right. And they are salaried employees, so regardless of the amount of time they take to learn, I pay them their full salary. But the other businesses are all doing fine and they balance it out.” All of her business ventures have been self-funded and the government has not reached out to her or her unit with any kind of help or support. She soldiers on tirelessly, weaving the geometric rumaals, the Paithani sarees with their eye catching peacocks and paisleys, as well as the himru and mashru for some lucky grooms. The octogenarian also travels by train to Machlipatnam to innovate with the block printers there, creating new combinations in the ancient art of kalamkari. Her permutations and combinations of fabric – from Mangalgiri cotton to Chanderis and mulmul, in rich hues of the earth – result in saris, dress materials, stoles, dhurries, bedspreads, table linen, quilts and much more in the kalamkari style. This Indian hand printed textile was revived by her in the 1980s and is ubiquitous today. A chunk of the kalamkari one sees in the Fabindia stores is also sourced from her. Not all of her efforts to revive or preserve handloom traditions, sadly,
have survived. She talks about a particular kind of cloth that was made to support the bottoms of couches and mattresses placed on wooden beds. “It was called nivar and it was a tape made in a zigzag pattern. This was woven in Warangal but now no one makes it anymore. I couldn’t revive it because the weavers’ children moved on to jobs and local politics.” She also regrets that the woodcraft of Etikoppaka – a village in Andhra Pradesh known for its woodcraft – is dying because the special kind of wood needed for this craft is not easily available anymore. “They are cutting off these trees for construction purposes, so the production is dying out.” In fact, she paints a bleak picture for the future of handlooms and handicrafts. She says, “The quality of production is diminishing everywhere. Whether it is silk from Gadwal or Paithani from Paithan, the quality is going down. It won’t come to a stop because the government is trying to set up units to keep these arts alive. But due to changing society, with the children not wanting to follow in their parents’ footsteps, I don’t know how long these traditional handlooms will survive.” For now, though, her business of kalamkari and the weaving of ikat, rumaals and Paithanis is safe. Her cousin and partner Dominic Hassan has expansion plans – of setting up a line of ready-to-wear garments using these fabrics next year. This is based on feedback received from the foreigners who visit the store – for whom dress materials and saris are of no use – that there are only so many stoles they can buy and wear. If, however, there are trousers, tops, tunics and dresses available in different sizes, kalamkari and ikat could find a larger market. Institutions like the diminutive Suraiya aapa, who knows the warp and weft of most weaves like the back of her hand, struggle to keep alive the weaves, fabrics and printing techniques that are an intrinsic part of the rich tapestry of India’s cultural history. The legacy may live on after her, with what she has created, but the knowledge, not documented or passed on, will be gone forever. And that will undoubtedly be an irretrievable loss.
79
making a difference
Forever working on the warp and weft of Indian handlooms At 84 years, Suraiya Hassan Bose may look frail but she has not lost any of the indomitable spirit with which she has travelled the length of the country studying Indian handloom and handicrafts. If there is one person familiar with handloom in the country, it is Suraiya aapa, as she is fondly known in Hyderabad, her hometown. Once married to Netaji Subhas Bose’s nephew, Aurobindo, she talks to Minal Khona about her life, her influences and her family. Incidentally it was her uncle, Abid Hassan Safrani, who gave India the patriotic catchphrase ‘Jai Hind’ Photographs: Lakshmi Prabala
74
magine having a father who spun khadi in jail after being arrested for supporting the freedom movement. A mother who had gold embroidery done on that very piece of khadi spun inside the jail and wore it as her bridal outfit. Or, growing up in a house in Sultan Bazaar in Hyderabad where Mahatma Gandhi’s influence was all pervading, where British products, including all that they owned, were burnt in a bonfire to support swadeshi goods. Imagine having parents, uncles and aunts who worked and interacted closely with great leaders like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Sarojini Naidu. That, in a nutshell, is where Suraiya Hassan Bose grew up. Her recounting of the days of preIndependence India is like stepping into a history book where well known facts and unknown details come alive. Talking to this diminutive lady about her life’s work gives one a glimpse of life from a bygone era. Born on 17 August 1928, Suraiya Hassan Bose or Suraiya aapa (older sister) as she is respectfully called, her list of achievements and her energy and commitment to her work even today, are nothing short of awe inspiring. Her legacy – in the form of the school she runs and the kalamkari business she set up – will outlive her for sure. But others, like the weaving of the rare himru and mashru fabric, sadly will perish in time to come. She recalls an old Hyderabad that has slipped into history books. She tells me how Hyderabadis were progressive in their thinking, with Hindu-Muslim barriers being non-existent. “My parents had friends who would visit us often. We always addressed them as mamu or chacha and were clueless about their religious affinities. The thought that they belonged to a different religion never crossed our minds,” she says. Her family was part of the freedom struggle and she recalls those days. “My father Badrul Hassan and my uncle Abid Hassan Safrani worked closely with Gandhiji and Sarojini Naidu. My uncle was private secretary to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and was with him until the time he went to Russia. My uncle was asked to return while Netaji went ahead. No one really knows what happened to him after that.” 75
Above right: Suraiaya aapa with her uncle Abid Hassan Safrani Right: Abid Hassan Safrani with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (left) Below: Suraiya aapa with her husband Aurobindo Bose
Netaji’s nieces too came frequently and were friends with the young Suraiya. They came up with the idea of their brother Aurobindo marrying her. Since religious barriers were of no consideration, they got married Her family’s patriotic feelings ran deep. “All the men in my family were sent to Germany for higher education as my grandmother was anti-British. I was educated at the Mehboobia Girls High School. The women in my family all wore khadi. My mother’s wedding outfit was made from the khadi my father had spun when he was in jail,” she reveals. Unthinkable then and now, for the bride of an aristocratic and educated family to do that, but the family was passionate about India and khadi. The history surrounding the Hassan family has touched all their lives. Suraiya aapa’s cousin and partner in her business, Dominic Hassan, reveals interesting anecdotes about his 76
uncle and Netaji. He says, “My uncle had added Safrani to his name based on the saffron colour of the flag of the Indian National Army to express his support for the freedom movement.” It was the same Abid Hassan Safrani who coined the oft-repeated patriotic call of ‘Jai Hind’. “Netaji, the founder of the Indian National Army, wanted a universal greeting for the revolutionaries. My uncle gave it a lot of thought and woke Netaji up at three in the morning. He told Netaji that he had come up with a perfect phrase for the revolutionaries to greet each other in the army. He had coined ‘Jai Hind’ – a shorter version of ‘Jai Hindustan Ki’. Jai means victory and the INA was fighting for the victory of Hindustan, so the phrase was apt. Netaji loved it and had the bugle sounded at four in the morning, when he announced that from then on this would be the standard greeting for all the members of the Indian National Army. The spirit of nationalism and patriotism was all pervasive,” says Dominic. In fact, Nehru concluded his historic ‘freedom at midnight’ speech at the Red Fort with the phrase ‘Jai Hind’, and it is this practice that has been followed by leaders ever since.
Perhaps it is this passion and national pride that Suraiya aapa absorbed as a little girl – one that keeps her motivated even today. Although she admits that as a teenager, she wore more of handloom fabrics than khadi – a habit she retains to this day, wearing only handloom saris. Her father owned the only bookshop then in Hyderabad, the Hyderabad Book Company, that sold books written in English – literary classics and coffee table books on art among others. One shop was in Secunderabad and the other in Abids. As a child she would spend time at the bookshop and read everything that caught her fancy. She recalls reading a book that documented all kinds of Indian fabrics, weaves and embroideries. “I remember browsing through books published by Oxford University Press which had pictures of Indian jewellery and old fabrics. My father also started the Cottage Industries Emporium in Hyderabad where I used to work as a teenager. That is how I got exposed to textiles, weaves and Indian crafts.” It was this exposure which led to her working with Pupul Jayakar. Suraiya aapa had gone to Delhi lo live with her uncle Safranisaab, who was then with the external affairs ministry. She worked with Mridula Sarabhai, Ambalal Sarabhai’s daughter, a social worker who helped in the recovery and rehabilitation of abducted women. Six months after working with Mridula, Suraiya aapa took a visitor from Hamburg University – Maria May – to Hyderabad as she wanted to see all the local textiles. So impressed was Maria with her knowledge of Indian textiles, that she recommended Suraiya aapa to Pupul Jayakar. That is how she got the chance to work with the legendary lady as well as with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Handloom and Handicraft Corporation, which is a part of the State Trading Corporation. This job gave her the chance to learn about handwoven fabrics and textiles on a larger scale as the
corporation worked with weavers from all over India. A decade of opportunities to study textiles and handicrafts and to work closely with weavers from remote villages, was enough to put her on this career path for the rest of her life. “I would study all the fabrics made in remote villages by the weavers. I knew what Siddipet, Warangal, Gadwal, Aurangabad and every district of Andhra Pradesh was making.” It is this knowledge perhaps that compels her to say with authority that the quality of the fabric being woven today has deteriorated, despite government help and a larger clientele. Somewhere along the way, between living and working in Delhi, marriage happened. Since Safranisaab was close to Netaji and his family, members of the leader’s family were frequent visitors to her uncle’s home in Delhi. Netaji’s nieces too came frequently and were friends with the young Suraiya. They came up with the idea of their brother Aurobindo marrying her. Since religious barriers were of no consideration, they got married. The marriage was destined to be a long distance one with Suraiya aapa in Delhi and Aurobindo in Kolkata, where he worked with a labour union. Briefly however, Suraiya aapa did get transferred to the West Bengal capital, where she got the chance to learn about the textiles of Bengal. Some time later, though, an exhibition of Indian textiles in Saudi Arabia and New York saw her back in Delhi. The couple took turns travelling between the cities and this continued till she moved back to Hyderabad after Aurobindo passed away. They never had any children. Returning to Hyderabad and living with her uncle, Suraiya aapa had ten acres of land at her disposal. Those days, in the late 1970s, she remembers, there were paddy fields visible all the way to Mehdipatnam. She decided to set up a farm. “I went to the Agriculture department to get information on how to grow various things. We had labourers and we worked together to set up a farm where we grew everything from several varieties of rice to vegetables, fruits and flowers. We even had cows and buffaloes to supply the milk.” During her stint with farming, Suraiya aapa realised that the children of the farm labourers were unable
to go to school. There was only one government school nearby and the medium of instruction was Telugu. After her uncle passed away, she started a school – the Safrani Memorial School in his memory. Later, she added a science wing – the Aurobindo Bose Science Centre to the school. The school today boasts of 600 students. The medium of education is English and all the children of employees study there free of cost. For the rest of the students, those whose parents can afford it pay the tuition fees, and the ones who can’t due to extreme circumstances are not charged. It is a school for boys and girls, and Suraiya aapa proudly says, “All the children who have cleared their tenth standard exams in the last decade, have passed with a first class. They have all gone on to having good jobs and some are even working abroad.” Today, her residence is in the same complex where the school stands as does her weaving and retail unit in Raidurg, at the crossroads between Mehdipatnam on one side and the road to Gachibowli on the other. It is the same piece of land, only smaller, as some portions were sold, and there is no more farming on the premises. Her love for gardening remains however, with orchids, grapes, papaya, lemon and other exotic plants growing all around as witness to her green thumb. Looking at the haphazard development in the area today, it seems incredible that 30 years ago, this was all agricultural land.
But the mainstay of Suraiya aapa’s work is her revival of dying weaves. As is her work with block printed kalamkari – which can only be made in Machlipatnam, a seaside town of Andhra Pradesh, where the vegetable dyes, in tandem with the sea water, are used with printing blocks to create designs that were once highly sought after by the British and French. Her company, started in 1981 as Deccan Exports, initially exported kalamkari and other Indian weaves and fabrics. A big source of support at that time was John Bissell – the founder of Fabindia. She recalls, “He helped me a lot with setting up my business. Besides buying kalamkari from us, he also introduced me to the Habitat group which bought fabric from us for all their stores worldwide.” Sometime
The women in my family all wore khadi. My mother’s wedding outfit was made from the khadi my father had spun when he was in jail,” she reveals. Unthinkable then and now, for the bride of an aristocratic and educated family to do that, but the family was passionate about India and khadi
77
“Whether it is silk from Gadwal or Paithani from Paithan, the quality is going down. It won’t come to a stop because the government is trying to set up units to keep these arts alive. But due to changing society, with the children not wanting to follow in their parents’ footsteps, I don’t know how long these traditional handlooms will survive”
78
after the death of John Bissell, the export policies changed and Suraiya aapa found it difficult to manage. She then moved on to getting dhurries woven in Warangal even as she set up a loom in her courtyard. At the loom she employed widows and young, uneducated women from the area and she taught them to weave in the different styles available – ikat, Paithani, the rumaal and so on. At the time, Indian fabrics and weaves were being swamped by a polyester wave of cheap and easy to maintain synthetic fabrics. With no government help and entirely self-funded, this business started taking shape. Ikat from Pochampalli in Andhra Pradesh, Paithani from Paithan in Maharashtra, woven with silk and pure gold thread, Jamewar from Kashmir, and the local telia rumaal were woven in her backyard. The rumaal is a 45 inch by 45 inch square piece of cloth, woven in a certain pattern in shades of red, white and black. It used to be worn in two pieces by labourers – one around their waist and one around their heads. However, the jewel in this handloom crown, and what is perhaps Suraiya aapa’s most challenging achievement, is the revival of the himru and mashru weaves. Although both trace their origins to Persia, they found their way into the wardrobes of the Nizams and their begums. The Nizams wore sherwanis made of the himru weave and their wives wore salwars made of mashru. Suraiya aapa’s master weaver Syed Umar joined her after he retired from his earlier place of work. He is perhaps the last living person who knows how to make the graph, or jaala as it is called, before himru can be woven. He says, “These weaves have been in existence since the times of Shah Jahan. Aurangzeb brought it to Aurangabad which was then part of the Deccan. The shahi hukumat – the Nizams – used to wear sherwanis of this fabric.” The fabric comes with motifs – small buttis or intricate vines and flowers and leaves. The more complex the pattern, the longer it takes to make. The weaving is so complicated that it takes a fortnight to set up the graph or the pattern for the cloth to be woven. After that, the girls employed there start weaving, at the pace of
three inches a day. On an average, it takes up to three months to weave a piece big enough to make a sherwani. Today, the fabric is woven only on order and there is a six-month waiting period. “To my knowledge, this is the only himru and mashru weaving unit left in the world,” says Suraiya aapa. No wonder, then, that every time I have visited her place, there have been people from different parts of the world walking around her loom trying to understand the complexity of it all. Umarsaab regrets the fact that though the girls employed there can weave the fabric, none of them have learnt the knack of making the graph – which is the first step. Suraiya appa adds that when Umarsaab stops working, she won’t be able to offer this rare and intricate fabric as part of her ouvre anymore. For now, she continues with the looms. She admits, however that, “Out of the five projects we have, this is the only one making a loss. There is a lot of wastage in threads till the girls learn the technique and get it right. And they are salaried employees, so regardless of the amount of time they take to learn, I pay them their full salary. But the other businesses are all doing fine and they balance it out.” All of her business ventures have been self-funded and the government has not reached out to her or her unit with any kind of help or support. She soldiers on tirelessly, weaving the geometric rumaals, the Paithani sarees with their eye catching peacocks and paisleys, as well as the himru and mashru for some lucky grooms. The octogenarian also travels by train to Machlipatnam to innovate with the block printers there, creating new combinations in the ancient art of kalamkari. Her permutations and combinations of fabric – from Mangalgiri cotton to Chanderis and mulmul, in rich hues of the earth – result in saris, dress materials, stoles, dhurries, bedspreads, table linen, quilts and much more in the kalamkari style. This Indian hand printed textile was revived by her in the 1980s and is ubiquitous today. A chunk of the kalamkari one sees in the Fabindia stores is also sourced from her. Not all of her efforts to revive or preserve handloom traditions, sadly,
have survived. She talks about a particular kind of cloth that was made to support the bottoms of couches and mattresses placed on wooden beds. “It was called nivar and it was a tape made in a zigzag pattern. This was woven in Warangal but now no one makes it anymore. I couldn’t revive it because the weavers’ children moved on to jobs and local politics.” She also regrets that the woodcraft of Etikoppaka – a village in Andhra Pradesh known for its woodcraft – is dying because the special kind of wood needed for this craft is not easily available anymore. “They are cutting off these trees for construction purposes, so the production is dying out.” In fact, she paints a bleak picture for the future of handlooms and handicrafts. She says, “The quality of production is diminishing everywhere. Whether it is silk from Gadwal or Paithani from Paithan, the quality is going down. It won’t come to a stop because the government is trying to set up units to keep these arts alive. But due to changing society, with the children not wanting to follow in their parents’ footsteps, I don’t know how long these traditional handlooms will survive.” For now, though, her business of kalamkari and the weaving of ikat, rumaals and Paithanis is safe. Her cousin and partner Dominic Hassan has expansion plans – of setting up a line of ready-to-wear garments using these fabrics next year. This is based on feedback received from the foreigners who visit the store – for whom dress materials and saris are of no use – that there are only so many stoles they can buy and wear. If, however, there are trousers, tops, tunics and dresses available in different sizes, kalamkari and ikat could find a larger market. Institutions like the diminutive Suraiya aapa, who knows the warp and weft of most weaves like the back of her hand, struggle to keep alive the weaves, fabrics and printing techniques that are an intrinsic part of the rich tapestry of India’s cultural history. The legacy may live on after her, with what she has created, but the knowledge, not documented or passed on, will be gone forever. And that will undoubtedly be an irretrievable loss.
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