These stories, Taleb writes, shield humanity from the
true randomness of the world, the chaos of human experience, and, to some
extent, the unnerving element of luck that plays into all successes and
failures. Perhaps nature by design loves variety, diversity and nurtures unique characteristics in living and non-living beings across geographies and time zones.
Nature therefore prefers to ask "kitne prakaar ke aadmi the" (variety of people who were there) to "Kitne aadmi the" (how many people were there) -a famous dialogue of Gabbar Singh in movie Sholey
Handlooms in India are true epitome of this variety, this diversity, this uniqueness which every weaving cluster represents through its weaving vocabulary. In our attempt to simplify we club weavers as one category of artisans but doing this would perhaps be like taking a sip through fire hose.
I recently visited two blocks in Nagaland which practice weaving. One in mountains- Chizami block (3 hours drive from Kohima) and One in plain land- Dhansiripar block (45 minutes from Dimapur railway station)
In contrast to weaving clusters of Varanasi, Bhagalpur, Bhuj, Maheshwar, Mangalgiri and so and so forth, WOMEN Weave in Nagaland and get due credit.
(Women also weave in other weaving clusters of India, its a different matter that they dont get credit for doing so.)
Weaving in Nagaland is on a loin loom which is narrower in width and is omnipresent in every rural household.
Traditionally, as it was the case in all other weaving clusters, weaving was done in natural fibers and in natural dyes extracted from nature. Despite the undulated mountainous terrain and small land holding, cotton was grown, hand ginned, hand carded and hand spun for weaving shawls.
Much to my dismay, in contrast to other weaving clusters of India, dilution of natural fibers has happened at much faster pace in Nagaland (if these two blocks can be considered representative sample of Nagaland). Local merchants prefer acrylic yarns and provide/coordinate supply of pre-dyed acrylic yarns to the women weavers. Majority of the weavers have shifted to artificial fibers and earn about Rs. 2000-2500 per month for a 4-6 hour weaving in a day.
Villages in Nagaland are very sparsely populated and this definitely is reflected in density of weavers in a given location.
In my quest and strong belief that there would still be someone in these clusters who still doesnt believe in use of artificial fibers in handloom, I found one women Vesaolu in Sakraba village who cultivates her own cotton, does hand ginning and hand carding. Since she has never used pesticides/ chemical fertilizers, her cotton is organic too
It was very interesting to see the hand ginning by Vesaolu and I recorded it for benefit of handloom textile lovers.
We will come back to the original question on viability of handloom textiles in future posts.
Its easy to talk to those who agree with you- I am trying to disagree with myself in this journey and will therefore go slow to make sure we dont commit Narrative Fallacy which I shared from Taleb's book when I began this post
Leaving the readers with some serene pictures from the Sakarba village.
