Saree making Division

 

I wrote about a stroll around avenue road sometime back. People loved those visuals and even the blog was chosen as one for the "Blog of the Month" by Chromebug. Thx again to all!

 So while i wrote the previous piece, i thought that i would put a small feature about the saree weaving division. Here is that piece for your feast.

                   It was 8:30 am and a fellow friend tempted that we catch dosas for breakfast at a very traditional place nearby. We were moving around the small and mazy streets around Avenue street. and looked hungry  On one of the wrong turns we took, we came across a noisy house, with lot of churning and buzzing of some sort of heavy machinery. It was bound to catch our attention and the board on the top converged our thoughts as well. It read the name of the owner and their sari weaving division. No we looked more interested with the cameras and the dosas could take the back seat for a while!!

 

As we entered inside, this was a completely different world.This doesnt appear to be a huge room for the kind of machinery installed here. Few people manning those machines dressed in their most comfortable attire. appeared to be busy with their work and felt quite comfortable with the presence of photographers. yes, the sound of the shutter was miniscule in front of this guzzling and churning of machines and we were almost non-existent for them in any manner.

 

There were few interesting things to note.First it was the amount of sound coming out of these machines and above all, more surprising as to how these people get accostomed to it., working there whole day.I am sure working in such environment must be taking toll on their hearing abilities. I realized this point only when i came out of this place. I was numb for few minutes and then some white noise followed or a while. Also interesting was to note, the aged machinery being used but artists using their experience to actually get work done. Machines are built to be reducing man effort, but after a certain point, but i have always noticed man trying to reduce machine's effort. These guys working in extremely small space and kept a good close watch on every single thread coming into the weaver.

I was astonished with the skill of these people working here, how undisturbed they were with huge noise and how they made these machines to work. But the actual awekening was when i noticed one of the machine where the weaveing had been on for sometime and i could see the border of the saree readied. It was time to get down to talking to them. I learnt that every saree takes approximately 3-3.5 hours to complete. These guys keep a very close vigil on these threads going in and if the patterns are coming up properly. Also i learnt that the secret to these designs being woven so perfectly goes to their craftsmanship with using  the patterns. The patterns are built using huge semi-metallic stencils. The threads are fed into this weaver via these Stencils.

I continued talking to them and enjoyed these minutes spent at this place. Its so interesting to notice that when people in the corporate life often do complain about the environment in which they work and how these variables might impact their performance.

 But looking at people around us, working in all kinds of environments, it feels that if you are really dedicated, then its your craftsmanship,skill which matters. Finally i bid adieu to these friends of mine. I exchanged smiles with all of them and left.

 

I was soon joined by my gang. We continued the search and finally could find out the dosa centre. The dosas were yummy but this experience of saree weaving really got weaved and embroided into my mind.