Meanwhile, the neera takes charge and you are suffused with a sense of peace. This is your welcome to Pochampally. While silk woven in the ikat style is what Pochampally is about, a brief stopover by a swaying paddy field on the way to the Handloom Park can make your day too. The weaving village of Pochampally, about 60 km from Hyderabad, combines the silken allure of its saris so well with the romance of nature.
Colourful spindles and yarn hang outside houses. As the morning progresses, the thak-thadaak of looms gains in volume. It’s magical to watch the irresistibly intricate designs take shape as the weavers ply their craft, each piece demanding detailed, patient work. Since every piece is hand-woven and the designs are laid out piece by piece, the watchword is uniqueness. The tourism complex at the village gives just a foretaste of this process, grounded in years of traditional expertise; for the complete magic to unfold, one must visit the handloom park, in Kanumukkala village, just a few kilometres from Pochampally proper. It’s spread over 24 acres and began functioning in 2009 and trains men and women in the intricate process behind the creation of ikat saris. Visitors are allowed to occasionally try their hand at working the looms.
Picture yourself working out on a cross-trainer; then visualise yourself trying to play table tennis at the same time, your eyes darting from left to right, right to left, following the flying jenny that carries the thread across. Then there’s the design to remember, taking shape slowly. That’s the sort of skill a Pochampally weaver displays. And this is just the last part, the culmination. Before reaching this stage, the silk yarn has to be set, marked, tied-and-dyed, sized and put through many more processes before the weaving begins. Weaving makes a multi-tasker out of you. If weaving isn’t for you, warm down by spinning the charkha, fascinating once you get the hang of it. “Students from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, delegates from the National Institute for Rural Development and many foreigners come here to understand the art,” says Shekhar, a master weaver, as he shows us around.
Back in Pochampally, many friendly families offer to demonstrate the art of weaving in return for some gupshup. It is common to see small units, headed by a master, with six or seven looms worked by hired weavers. At one such unit, Prasanna, a weaver, says he and his wife work for about 10 hours a day. “It takes a week to make one sari.”
My newfound respect for the art of ikat prevents me from haggling, as I shop for a sari at the Pochampally Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society which houses some of the best collections. Pochampally is also the village where Acharya Vinoba Bhave began the Bhoodan movement in 1951, persuading zamindars to part with a piece of their land for peasants. The Vinoba Ashram which stands next to the tourism complex has clearly seen better days, though: some precious portraits of Vinoba Bhave are covered in cobwebs. Pochampally is also a temple palle (village). The Markandeya temple, with its quiet environs, is worth a visit. But it is the bewildering process of a sari taking form on the handlooms that’s a vision to behold.
It wouldn't be too hard to stick out in a simple white shirt and black pants amid a crowd of glamorous dresses, jazzy shirts, colourful trousers and high heels. Varanasi-based Badruddin and Hanumanta were a duo with a mission of creating awareness of the charm of India's age-old handloom work - and its growing problems.
They stood out as fashion-conscious crowds strolled, cheered and even jeered at a plethora of outfits at the exhibition area of the just-concluded Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW).
With as many as 128 participating designers, WIFW served as a business-to-business platform for many, and in their case, to educate people about the lost charm of handlooms.
Busy spinning the yard, they rued how the growing western culture has depleted the importance of handloom work in India and how that is the reason behind their everyday struggle for survival. "We don't get wages for the work that requires so much of hard work," Badruddin, 55, told INN while showing the minute work that he was busy doing on the handloom machine.
"The main problem of handloom work is the market. When we take the piece to the market, we don't get a price for it. And if we don't get the money, how will we make the next piece? We need money to make new saris and we don't even get that," he added.
Hanumanta, who must be in his late 50s, agreed. "We don't get value for our hard work. We take approximately six to seven days to make a silk sari and what do we get in return? Nothing."
Both the men were part of WIFW as members of Bunkar Seva Kendra, an initiative by the textile ministry's Development Commissioner for Handlooms, who lends support to local artisans and weavers through many of their policies around the country.
At the fashion extravaganza, where designers hardly sell anything below Rs.10,000, they were glad to get queries at least.
"People came with queries, but there are more number of watchers than buyers. Most people want bling and other stylish fabrics. Who wants to go for purity? People don't understand silk any more," rued Badruddin.
They said handlooms around their village, 20 km away from Varanasi, have depleted from 1,500 to to just 50 to 60. Plus, the remuneration is not on a par with the market price of the project.
Hanumanta said the prime reason for the dismal payment is the existence of middlemen.
"They buy our pieces according to their convenience, and we are forced to sell for whatever price they want to as we need money for our livelihood... even if it means selling it at a loss," Hanumanta told INN.
That is also the reason why they discourage their new generation to continue the trend.
"Our families have been into handlooms since generations, but we don't want our next generation to get into this. Earlier, we used to get a good amount, so we continued with this work. But now there is no money," said Hanumanta, who is also a government employee and earns a monthly income of Rs.32,000.
Even government schemes haven't been fully useful to free them of their struggle.
"The government says it has already launched several schemes for us (handloom artists), but the middleman takes the entire cost in the form of NGOs and welfare communities. We want the mediator's role to vanish. We want to get in touch with the government directly," said Hanumanta.
Even while many of noted designers like Ritu Kumar and Sabyasachi Mukherjee have been making efforts to revive the handloom sector, the plight of such weavers is sad.
On its part, the National Handloom Development Corporation Limited (NHDC), a national level agency for the promotion and development of the handloom sector, has given handloom weavers many facilities, said B.B Paul, director (Noth Zone), Weavers' Service Centre.
"We are bearing the transport cost of these weavers if they are travelling to buy yarns from other states. Also, the government has announced some bank facilities. These weavers were not getting easy access to the bank, but now things have changed," Paul told INN.
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