Saree Read online

  The river was, in fact, perfect for washing and dyeing sarees. The cool brisk sea breeze would make small work of drying thick hanks of cotton even during the wettest of humid monsoons. The wide verandahs that encircled the house were perfect spaces for weavers. Protected from the elements, they could work the heavy looms in comfort with the silk and cotton feeder threads running the full length of the house.

  And the ballroom that had once been the glittering salon was a spacious enough for artisans to embroider or block print sarees. The library at the back of the house could be converted into a change room, complete with ornate mirrors, so that the saree makers could see how their work would be transformed by the female form.

  So when the old man started making noises about wanting to move back to England and see his motherland before he died, Nair had made him an offer he could not refuse, for he had been saving half his salary for many years.

  Nair had moved to the island with his widowed mother and young wife. In Ceylon he would make his fortune unencumbered by the caste pecking order; caste did not seem to matter as much on the Buddhist island. The daring enterprise nearly went bankrupt several times in the first twenty years – the first lot of sarees sold to the modalalis of Kandy had all arrived in their stores moth-eaten and mildewed – but more than a hundred years later, the fourth generation of Nair saree makers were still the chetties of the mill.

  Nila shuffled along nervously and stood with the chattering group of sixteen or so young women and men who were waiting outside the mill.

  ‘I am so glad I got this job,’ one girl babbled. ‘My father died two years ago, and my mother could really do with the money.’

  ‘What are you good at?’ another girl asked coolly. She was dressed in a crisp pink chiffon saree that was meticulously ironed and draped. The potta was carefully pleated and pinned to her shoulder and cascading down her back in a narrow stream. ‘I won the Gampaha district batik dyeing competition two years running. You may have heard of me. My name is Renuka Weeraratne.’

  She looked around to see blank stares but was interrupted by a petite, bouncy country girl filled with dimples and smiles. ‘I do macramé. I have been selling my work at the Nuwara Eliya craft market for some time now,’ she giggled.

  ‘My mother won’t let me sell my work. She says that common people don’t appreciate its artistic value,’ Renuka said.

  ‘So are you planning on keeping all the sarees you make here, then?’

  ‘Yes, actually. I am getting married next June and my mother thought it would be lovely if I could do all the sarees for my trousseau.’

  ‘Why? Can’t your family afford to buy them for you?’ a third girl asked brazenly. She was dressed in a pale floral saree that glowed next to her dusky skin. Unlike Renuka in her pink chiffon, she’d only pinned one edge of her saree to the back of her shoulder, letting the potta cascade over her like a fine sheen of water.

  Renuka’s eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth to deliver a stinging rebuke, but quickly shut it again. For while everybody had been distracted getting to know each other, nobody had noticed the big wooden door of the mansion swinging open.

  A tall woman in a purple saree stood before them, holding the heavy mahogany door wide open. ‘Come through,’ she said in a deep, melodious voice, and they all filed in obediently.

  ‘Kaalai va nakkam, Aibuwan, welcome to Nair & Sons Sarees – the only full-production saree house in Ceylon. My name is Gauri Nair and my father owns this company,’ the woman said, inclining her head gently towards a framed picture of a bespectacled old man with many Shiva stripes of holy ash on his forehead.

  ‘You are here because you may have the talent to be a saree maker. A master saree maker. To be a master, you must be able to design, weave, dye, work and drape a saree. Five skills – pancha dakshata. You will be taught all those skills here in the next six months and you will need to master all five of them before the exhibition in September. There are only four positions with the mill on offer and you need to win a place in the exhibition to earn one.’

  Miss Gauri bowed deeply to a fair-skinned middle-aged woman who’d just come through an anteroom from the back of the house.

  ‘Guru Lakshmi is our master designer. She will show you how to transform that picture in your head into fluid fabric.’

  ‘Is this the new group, Gauri?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yes, Guru,’ Miss Gauri replied.

  ‘Just make sure they are in time for the pooja,’ Guru Lakshmi sniffed. She looked pointedly from the large clock behind Miss Gauri to the road outside and then back at Miss Gauri. The guru sniffed again before gliding away to the salon behind her. Nila counted five students in the back room, waiting eagerly, their sharpened pencils poised over large design boards.

  Miss Gauri turned on her heel and walked off briskly, the members of the group scurrying behind her like mice. Out on the verandah, she nodded towards a bald dwarf dressed in a white sarong and tunic.

  ‘Now, Guru Sindhu here will teach you how to spin and weave,’ Miss Gauri sang, picking up a puff of raw cotton from a large bale. ‘He’ll teach you the magic of the baana and thaana – how to treadle a loom and create cloth from fluff.’ A coterie of barefooted weavers click-clacked away on the verandah, their rhythmic slapping adding the bass to Gauri’s melody.

  The guru was too busy threading a large complicated loom to give the new group anything beyond the barest of nods, though he too looked briefly at the road and back at Miss Gauri.

  She danced away again, leading the group out through the house and down to the river, where sarees of every hue were being dyed in great vats of pigments over open fires. ‘Guru Hirantha here is our dye master – he’ll teach you how make the colours of the sun from the fruit of the earth,’ Miss Gauri called out. She pointed to a hulking bare-chested man who was stirring a vat with a massive paddle. It was a hypnotic sight – yards and yards of fabric gently boiling away in the vats, iridescent blues, bright magentas, ruby reds and eye-watering yellows all competing for attention against the verdant backdrop of the emerald river – and a few of the students stood transfixed.

  ‘Come along now,’ Miss Gauri sang out, smiling, and made her way towards a small clearing near the river. In the centre of the clearing, surrounded by thick green shrubs, was an amphitheatre with the statues of the gods Saraswati Devi and Lord Ganapathi on a central dais. ‘There is a formal shrine in the house,’ Gauri said, ‘but this is where I love to pray. I feel closer to her here.’

  ‘Her? Surely you are praying to Lord Ganapathi?’ Renuka asked, pointing to the elephant-headed god.

  ‘No, Saraswati Devi is our patron goddess. She takes care of artists, weavers and musicians – those who create something out of nothing. We start every morning with prayers in the main temple but try to come down here every few days to pray to her.’

  ‘I am coming here to learn how to weave sarees, not to become a Hindu,’ Renuka muttered as the group moved on. ‘Tamils are like that, you know – they like to make everyone like them.’

  ‘I come from Kotahena – I have no problems with Hindus,’ Nila said, distracted. She’d been almost dumbstruck by the beauty of the statue of the goddess. Carved from white marble, it was almost lifelike. In the flickering early morning light, Nila had imagined that the goddess smiled at her.

  ‘My best friend is Tamil. We grew up together. They are no different to us,’ said a girl in a yellow saree as they all made their way back into the house. ‘My name is Devika, by the way.’

  ‘I am Nila.’

  The little dimpled country girl who had spoken earlier introduced herself too. ‘My name is Punsala,’ she said.

  There was no further time for introductions as Miss Gauri led them into a large shrine room on the eastern side of the house, where Guru Lakshmi, Guru Hirantha and Guru Sindhu were already seated facing the stone deities. They were joined by another woman, tall and svelte.

  ‘This is Guru Sakunthala, she will teach you all the skills o
f embroidery, block printing, appliqué, lace making and saree blouse stitching,’ Miss Gauri informed them, but she sounded vague now, her eyes straying towards the gate. The members of the group had started to mimick her, ducking and peering around each other for a glimpse of the road, though nobody quite knew who they were looking for.

  ‘I will have to introduce you to your draping master later,’ Miss Gauri finished quietly.

  Everyone sat on the floor, as with a very audible grunt of displeasure, Guru Sindhu bowed his head deeply and started his chant, first addressing Lord Ganapathi.

  ‘Om gam Ganapataye namaha! Om gam Ganapataye namaha! Om gam Ganapataye namaha!’

  Nila wasn’t usually given to serious religious practice. Members of the Mendis household visited the local Buddhist temple each full moon, for Poya, but did not disturb its saffron-robed officials at any time in between. Nila was pleasantly surprised now by the rhythmic beauty of the Hindu chant of praise. Her eyes closed of their own volition, her body swaying as the tempo changed and the more melodic dedication to the goddess Saraswati began.

  ‘Om aim maha Saraswatyai namaha! Om aim maha Saraswatyai namaha! Om aim maha Saraswatyai namaha!’

  Nila was so carried away that she didn’t notice the deep rumbling noise of the motorcycle as it roared up the river road. She didn’t even notice the loud backfiring until the chanting in the temple died away, and was the last to join the rustle and tussle to get a good view of the commotion.

  Out the front, just inside the mansion’s gate, a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a riding jacket and a crisp, low-slung white sarong helped a young white woman alight from the monstrously large machine. To the scandalised horror of everyone watching, the woman flung herself at him, pulling his head down to kiss him on the lips.

  ‘Deyo Buddhu sale!’ Punsala shrieked.

  He gently disentangled himself from her before firmly sending her on her way out through the gates of the mill to the little track that led down to the tourist huts on the beach just beyond.

  ‘What a rake!’ Renuka said under her breath.

  As he turned around, he shrugged off his jacket to reveal his Saliya Brahmin thread – a thick white cord encircling his right shoulder and muscled torso. On his left shoulder was a large tattoo of a spider bearing a lotus on its back.

  ‘Handsome devil!’ Devika whispered to Nila.

  ‘That is your saree draping master,’ Gauri sang as the man drew close. ‘My brother, Guru Raju.’

  If Saturday mornings were Nila’s favourite time of the week, it was surely because the afternoons were the time she liked the least. Week after week, month after month, for nearly two years now, Saturday afternoons were when prospective grooms came to the Mendis household to inspect its wares. And week after week, month after month, year after year, young men would turn their eyes away from Nila and look besottedly at her sister instead.

  ‘So is your mother going to send Anoja to me this afternoon?’ Mrs Vasha asked as Nila walked through a decidedly large hole in the stick fence that separated the two houses. Mrs Vasha always referred to the younger Mendis sister by her given name, Anoja, instead of her nickname, Rupani, which meant beautiful. It’d been Nila herself who’d coined the nickname after seeing how pretty her sister was as a baby, but Mrs Vasha bristled whenever she heard it, saying the young girl had enough airs as it was.

  Nila sighed. ‘No, she says she needs Rupani’s help with the tea things.’

  ‘What utter nonsense! Anoja wouldn’t know the pouring end of a teapot from the end of a broomstick! The only reason your mother keeps her there is to see if one of your grooms will offer for your sister instead!’ Mrs Vasha harrumphed as she sat down on the concrete step at the back of her kitchen next to Nila.

  ‘Well, almost all of them have,’ Nila said.

  ‘The only reason your mother has not parted with Anoja is that none of them have been wealthy enough!’

  ‘I thought the Obesekera boy’s family made a respectable offer,’ Nila said as she picked up a clove and wrapped the pointy end in faille tissue. This was their Saturday ritual – Mrs Vasha would help Nila wrap cloves for the grooms while discussing their potential. Nimal, Mrs Vasha’s skinny servant boy, loitered about sweeping the garden, stopping periodically to scratch his wormy bottom or to finger his slingshot.

  ‘No matter how much I feed him, he does not put on weight,’ Mrs Vasha muttered as the lad went about his business. ‘But you’re right, it was a very good offer for your sister! The Obesekera family is a very respectable family.’

  ‘But poor. Their land has been pawned to educate the relatives, who are all in government jobs.’

  ‘Think about the respectability, Nila. To be a Mrs Obesekera of the Obesekeras of Ragama. What a fine thing it would have been!’

  ‘Respectability won’t pay for gold bangles or pretty sarees,’ Nila pointed out gently as she laid out the wrapped cloves.

  ‘It was her duty to accept. To help your mother, at least . . .’

  ‘But she is young. The fear of being unmarried has not yet overcome the fear of not marrying a rich man – one who can afford many servants.’

  Mrs Vasha grunted as she reached out for another handful of cloves to wrap. ‘What is your view on the lad coming today? Are you hopeful, or will you call for Anoja even before the tea is served?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Vasha – I am always hopeful, and I don’t always resort to Rupani to distract my suitors,’ Nila chided. ‘I was utterly hopeful, even when the matchmaker brought the Devasinghes’ proposal. Hopeful that Siridasa Devasinghe would turn up sober! But alas, no – he fell asleep in an alcoholic fog no sooner than he’d slipped off his smelly slippers and sat down in Father’s chair!’

  Mrs Vasha laughed.

  ‘I was even hopeful when the kapuwa brought the Edirasinghe proposal . . .’

  ‘Surely you don’t mean Gunawardene Edirasinghe?’

  Nila nodded, smiling.

  ‘When did this happen, Nila? When? But how could your mother even entertain the idea . . . why, everybody knows . . .’

  ‘It happened while you were away in Nuwara Eliya visiting your sister, and yes, everyone from here to the turnpike at Nugegoda knows that Gunawardene Edirasinghe was dropped on his head by his ayah as a baby.’

  ‘Your mother would marry you to a tree! Are you quite resigned to never marry, then?’

  ‘Does it matter, as long as I can pay my way? Did you know that the English word spinster used to refer to a woman who could live independently because by spinning she could earn a living equal to that of a man? I like that idea.’

  ‘And especially so since your favourite class is spinning and weaving?’

  ‘Guru Sindhu is a genius!’ Nila said. ‘He understands each fibre, each fabric and each thread that goes into each saree! He understands how the baana and thaana should be threaded, depending on whether you are weaving a saree for a matron or a young lady . . . and . . . and . . . and he is so kind!’

  ‘You are quite taken with him, then?’

  ‘As I am with all the teachers!’ Nila confessed. ‘It’s just that Guru Sindhu told me quietly the other day that I would be his choice for one of the four places on offer!’

  ‘Well done! Oh, I am so happy for you! I can’t wait to see your mother sit up and take proper notice of you when you bring in five hundred rupees a month!’

  ‘But Mrs Vasha . . . I am not doing so well in the other classes,’ Nila told her anxiously.

  ‘I thought everybody loved your work!’

  ‘Not all,’ Nila said, remembering her first day at the saree mill.

  Nila had found herself in a group with four others: Devika, Renuka, Punsala and a young man from Kandy called Rangana, who had terrible scars on the right side of his face. Their first class had been with Guru Sindhu, the dwarf weaving master.

  ‘It’s better that you are in small groups,’ the guru said. ‘I hate teaching big groups. I never know if my students quite hear what I am saying or if they c
an even see me! Today I will cover the basics of fabric making. We’ll spend the first two weeks on spinning and the rest of the next four months on weaving. We leave the last month for you to work on your exhibition piece.’

  The guru spent the next two hours describing the fibres used in making handmade sarees – cotton and silk – and the varying grades and qualities and where they came from. ‘Now, you were told to bring some samples of your work – show me what you’ve brought.’

  One by one, each of them brought forth their offering. Renuka volunteered first, of course, taking out a large bundle of batik murals and hangings from the large carry bag that she’d been carting all over the mill. She laid her work out on the only table in the room as if she were exhibiting at a grand fair, flourishing each piece, laying some on angles while draping others to great effect. Once she was done, she invited all to see, smiling coquettishly as everybody showered her with admiring shahs and aahs.

  ‘Excellent use of colour and shading – excellent!’ the guru said. ‘You are a very talented young lady. Talented indeed!’

  Punsala went next, shyly presenting a range of macramé toys and a hanging vase she’d made. ‘Oh, but this is just wonderful,’ Guru Sindhu cried. ‘See how she’s used different thread of different weights and stretch for the different animals? A peacock is of course proud and stiff, so she’s used the heavy raffia. Whereas an elephant – it is majestic, while still being gentle and kind – so she’s used a soft cotton! This shows the child has a good understanding of her base material!’

  The Guru beamed with pleasure. ‘Devika, what have you brought for us?’ he asked.

  Wordlessly, Devika pulled out a hessian-covered scroll from her bag. The hessian was so dirty and stained that Mrs Vasha would hardly use it for rags, Nila thought dubiously, as Devika gently unrolled the parcel on the floor. Without much fanfare, the young woman passed around piece after piece of delicately hand-painted silk. ‘The oily hessian keeps the silk supple by not letting it dry out and the dirt traps in more of the moisture,’ she explained.