The craft of Sanjhi

Have you ever tried folding a paper into a square, folding it again and snipping off the corners? Open it and you find  pretty patterns of holes throughout the paper.

Sanjhi craft is somewhat like this, except stencils are used to make definite designs on paper and the cutting is done with special scissors. Primarily these stencils were made to draw rangoli patterns on the floor. They  are placed on flat surfaces, or water, where the rangoli has to be drawn. Dry colors are then sifted onto the surface. Placing the colours evenly over  the stencils is a work of art and lifting the stencil off the surface also requires skill. Peacocks, bullock carts, horses, cows, butterflies and trees are some of the common motifs used. The intricate craftsmanship reflects the artist’s devotion and the intimate love for Lord Krishna. An elaborate Sanjhi design could take anywhere between an hour and a month to produce.

 Primarily the art of sanjhi making whether it is a folk or temple tradition are directed towards worship. Goddess Sanjhi is venerated, and prayer offered to her. It is a labour of love, when after the worship, one sanjhi is effaced and another one created. The term Sanjhi is derived from the Hindi word sandhya, the period of dusk with which the art form is typically associated.  It was Radhe, who it is said, made  Sanjhi rangolis using natural colors, to impress Krishna. Sanjhi has been popular ever since, and during the Mughal period, contemporary themes were introduced for greater perspective.

Sanjhi making is prominent in Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh, both in homes and the temples, and the designs related to Sri Krishna’s life. The peak period is in September and October when pilgrims flock from all over India, to particular sites, of the Krishna Temples, and the Sanjhi creations are placed in specific places in the temples. One traditional sanjhi at Goverdhan is the image of Sri Krishna lifting the mountain with his finger, and another of him playing with the gopikas. Once the rituals are over, the papers and material are thrown into the river.

The art of cutting paper using stencils, is also taken up by unmarried girls in the hope of getting a good husband, a temple tradition of the 17^th Century, and apart from being practised in Vrindavan it is also done in a single temple in Barsana, Radha’s village.

A languishing craft, it was revived by the Delhi Crafts Council, when the remaining few artistes were traced, and a newer set of people were trained in the craft. Sanjhi craft was shifted from the traditional to the contemporary mode, where it is converted into framed pictures, coasters, lampshades etc, so that a new market is thrown open.

Pattamadai Mats

In the old days, every home in Tamil Nadu had one or two pais or mats made out of reeds. People slept on these mats, welcomed guests to sit on them, and for toddlers to sit down on them and play. After their use, the mats were rolled up and kept in a corner. We have lost the grace of sitting on the floor, not realising that it is a form of exercise and good for your lower limbs! There were mats of various dimensions, and the long, narrow ones called bandhi pais were used for sitting down in a row on the floor and eating. They were woven for weddings and gifted to the bride and groom often with their names woven into them.

Soft and pliable silk mats are produced in a village called Pattamadai, in the Thiruneveli District of Tamil Nadu. They are different from the common pais or mats which are commonly available.. The mats are made of kora grass which grows in river beds and other marshy lands, and harvested in the months of  September/October or February/March.

What makes the pattu pais special and different to others?  It entails a complicated weaving process, which is  unique to this region. The grass is cut when it is still tender and green, and dried in the sun, boiled and dried again. The strips are first washed in running water, then  immersed in water for a whole week sometimes. The grass swells, and when it dries completely, it is taken for weaving after it is dyed in the colours preferred. Natural dyes were the only colours used, but later for the sake of convenience synthetic dyes were introduced. Red, green and black were commonly used, but today there are a whole range of colours and designs to choose from and some even have zari borders. After weaving the mats are polished.

The fine silk mats are woven with reeds which have their outer skins shaved off, and split into  very fine strands, which are used for the weft in weaving. The warp is cotton, and water is sprinkled throughout the process of weaving. They are called pattu pais because they are so delicately woven  and so soft that they feel like silk, and can go into a box or even a handbag. The  mat weaving is a closely guarded trade secret among the Muslim Community of Pathamadai from ages.

Coarser mats are also woven and today they are made into runners, place mats, shopping bags, file cases etc which throws the market wide open.  With modern design intervention and reintroducing natural dyes, this handicraft has had new direction and will  hopefully be kept alive both in the local and international market for generations to come.

A valuable craft the Pattamadai mats were presented to celebrities like the Soviet leaders Bulganin and Khrushchev, Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth.

SONS AND DAUGHTERS

This column is addressed to the sons and daughters  who live with or without their parents. To the children who wish they could do more for them, but cannot due to “circumstances beyond their control”. To those who are assailed with guilt for living their own lives.

We’ve been there, ourselves, so we know what it’s like, to be helpless.  As newly weds, we lived in Bhopal for 5 years, before the Union Carbide tragedy. We would often sit in the verandah of our little home, musing on the old folks back home, wondering if they were in good health and cheer. We had no telephone at home, and no mobiles for constant communication. We had to be content to make the occasional call, and send letters by snail mail which would take a week to reach Chennai or Bangalore, and another week to get a reply if they wrote back immediately. My resourceful grandfather gave me a pack of postcards, with his address, to write at least every three days. He would send us parcels of dried curry leaves which were not available here, and my mother would add on rasam powder and balls of vadagam!

We fervently wished we could be there for our parents, even though they were blessed with good health. The trajectory of change comes in with passing time. Families went nuclear, and we encouraged our children to seek greener pastures, to better their lifestyles, with a “we’ll look after ourselves, we are fine” attitude masking cleverly any physical ailment we may have. Our sons and daughters go away with the images of parents who are young looking, invincible and definitely “alright”.  When they make their brief visits for a couple of weeks at the most, which are divided between visiting two sets of parents, cousins, friends and what have you, they only see the best front that you put out for them. Can they be blamed for something they do not see? They are besides, nurtured in a Western world with a different value systems and a radical approach to old age.

Westerners  nudge the children out of the nest when they are young adults, to live on their own, and the older people would rather die than live with their children. The West however is geared to offer comfort for their elderly, right from user friendly pavements, public transport, safety audits at home, and streamlined communication systems to hospices and medical care. We are the sandwich generation of Indians, watching life streams changing, elders trying to be independent of their children, not knowing what to do when they are old and infirm, and systems not in place for staving off their loneliness, nor support for coping with age related illnesses.

The sons and daughters do not “see” what their parents are going through, nor understand that the smallest of jobs seem so difficult, even the ones they executed with ease a couple of years ago. With domestic help on the decrease, and becoming prohibitively expensive day to day living becomes a challenge.  You meet children, who assuage their feelings of guilt by presenting their parents with expensive gifts, laptops or ipads that they don’t know how to use. Smart phones leave them bewildered.  How many of them have the time in their turbo charged lives to actually sit down with the parents to explain the working of these gizmos?

Thanks to the innumerable interviews I have had with the young and the old I am able to understand the problems of both sides without being judgemental.  Take the case of one daughter-in-law I know.   She is the most darling of women with compassion and an altruistic zeal to be there for her in-laws. An outgoing girl, pre-marriage, she is submissive, casting  her dreams aside to be next to her ageing mother- in- law to do her bidding, whatever. In return she receives the love and support of her husband and his family.

The other kind are children who do not want their parents to quit the family house, despite their inability to cope with a sprawling home in the autumnal years of their lives. There are some weird ideas of sentiment, of memories of growing up which they want to hold on to. Why don’t they come back and live in the home that they profess to love, for God’s sake? Of course they can’t, they have their careers, their lives, their children. One solution is retirement homes. Not easy, first the shift which is hard to accept. Secondly few have the blessings of their children for whom consigning the parents to a home leaves a bruised ego.

We have to trade our possessions and  property, for  a peace which is so invaluable. Some children do not allow the parents  to sell any property, and they just abide by their children’s decisions.

A daughter whom I know, used to visit her parents very regularly even though she lived abroad, and it was not just  a “naam ke vaste “visit”. I don’t know how she managed it, but her time management was wonderful. On every visit she and her husband would try to understand parental needs, look at the home again with new eyes to make it user friendly, put in a stair lift if necessary, hand rails for steps leading to the house, grab rails in the bathroom  etc. If the home needed painting it was done during their visits despite protests from the older people. They were encouraged to make their life simpler, sell whatever property they could not manage to keep. They also looked for support systems within close family and friends who could tackle emergencies, and be of solace to them whenever needed.

There are caring, considerate sons and daughters, by the legion, and parents who make life tough for younger people, complaining, demanding and obstinate. Every swallow does not a summer make, so it is difficult to generalise.  Both generations need to have a balanced perspective, and  understanding of each others difficulties, if they wish to have a good relationship. Solutions lie in each of us, if we care to find them.

TRIBAL SHAWLS OF NAGALAND

As in every form of weaving, the making of the Naga Shawl has a close connection to the rituals and beliefs of the people. Nagaland is in North East of India and the Nagas are divided into sixteen tribes. The Nagas are Indo-Tibetian people who were probably migrants, into India. They were headhunters, and wore the heads of their enemies as trophies, and were rewarded for their acts of “valour” by gifts of adornments, like shawls, hornbill feathers, cowries and necklaces. There were special shawls called warrior shawls, where  motifs of spears were woven.

The Naga Shawls are bright red and black which are the main colours, and sometimes yellow and a bit of blue are also used. The red in the shawl signified the blood of the enemy. The blue was derived from leaves which were taken off plants grown in a bit of land cleared and kept for this purpose in the outskirts of the village. The Nagas believed that their enemies could be warded off with their own brand of magic spells.

Throughout India, weaving is considered the man’s occupation, as it is hard work, sitting at the loom for hours.  The women of the household did smaller jobs which would assist in the weaving of cloth. In Nagaland, however, weaving was very much a woman’s activity. Every Naga woman learnt to weave cloth for herself and her family. This was done on a simple backstrap loom, and the warp fixed to a wall in the house. The loom was strapped to the small of her back.

The designs were woven into the cloth in different colours through the warp or through the weft threads, using a stick of bamboo, or even porcupine quills. Because of the nature of the loom, the designs were always linear and geometric. Sometimes the shawl was woven in three different pieces, and joined together. Weaving as we all know is a laborious process, and each piece could take about ten hours for a practised weaver.

If you were a tribal wearing a shawl, the Nagas could gauge the status in society by just looking at it, because certain designs were reserved only for chieftains or for powerful clans within the tribe. There were other restrictions for the weaver women,  like a pregnant woman could not weave. When one was weaving a warrior shawl, the weaver could not eat or drink in anyone’s home.

Sometimes painting was done on the shawls, and the pigment taken from a tree, blended with rice beer!  This painting was done only by an old man who told stories of his life as he painted. Originally the shawls were in cotton, but wool did come in later. The special shawls were not worn everyday but for an occasion.

NOTE:   Cloth is woven when the warp is intertwined with the weft. Warp is made up of threads going across, horizontally. Weft threads are vertical, and both woven together makes the cloth.

  

GIFT OF THE NEEDLE

Gujerat is a state which is known for its various crafts, textiles and embroideries. The rural women in Gujerat are excellent women expressing themselves with needle and thread right from the time they toddle.  As soon as they can hold a needle, they sit by their mother or grandmother and start stitching with coloured thread on square pieces of cloth. As they grew older they progressed with different kinds of stitches, and learnt to sew, and embroidering on ghaghras, pillow cases, bags, shawls, cholis and anything that required embellishments. Much of the embroidery has mirrors worked into it. This is what we call oral tradition, that is, a craft skill which is passed on from mother to daughter over many generations.

Everyday, after tending to their cattle and field work, plus house work, the women set aside an hour or two to their embroidery.  All the embroidered goods that she does, is given to the girl as trousseau during her wedding. Being handcrafted, every piece is a valuable possession.

As with every craft, royal patronage helped the craft to blossom. The Mughals were chief patrons, and during their rule, the quality of craft and textiles rose to a peak. Emperor Aurangazeb particularly commissioned embroidered textiles for wall hangings,  for his palace, for his nobility, and for the animals.  Even tents and palanquins were richly embroidered and used during travelling and camping. Marco Polo who travelled to India during the 13^th century marvelled at these beautiful embroideries inlaid with gold and silver threads, proclaiming them to be the most beautiful in the world. Ahmedabad became one of the largest centres, for the embroideries of Gujerat and even today you can see the rural folk exhibiting their work on the streets.

After the Mughals, the East India Company owned by the British carried on a flourishing trade with Gujerat embroidered fabrics.

Every village in Gujerat has its own style of embroidery, and it is easy to find out which village the embroidery is done judging by the stitches.  Bhuj is a place where exquisite embroidery is done, and fine embroidery is done in Banni north of Bhuj near the Pakistan border. The needle craft is done on woollen shawls, and is one of the most popular items as the work is one of great beauty and skill.

The wealth of a particular tribe is judged by the number of items embroidered and the quality of the work. Quilts are part of every family, and however poor they be, living in huts, the quilts are their proud possessions which indicate their social status.

Beadwork is also a form of embroidery for wall hangings, and worked around solid utilitarian objects in the home. They could be two dimensional and was developed in the late 19^th century.

Embroidery is done on shoes and handbags and find appreciation in the worldwide market. The cultural heritage of Gujerat lies in its textiles and handicrafts, and next time you see an exhibition of Gujerat craft advertised in the newspapers, be sure to attend!

THE PEN THIEF

The phone rings with urgency.  I pick up the receiver, it is someone, wanting a phone number. I am the renowned storer of phone numbers, addresses and email IDs and  not just for the family.

“Have you heard of Just Dial? Ask them?”

“I prefer to ask you.  Its QuickRrrrrrrr”

“Thanks”  I go through the pages of my “hard copy” of the telephone directory, dependable at all times.”Here it is.  Note it down. Ready?”

“Wait, let me get a pen and note paper.”  I wait. 

“Oh God, I can’t find the pen.  Hey,  Alamelu, why did you take my pen?”

Voice in the background…”Why should I take your pen, Amma? Ask your children.”

“Dash it, nothing stays in place in this house.  Ah, I found another one. Give me the number please.” I rattle off the number a trifle bugged at being kept waiting.

“Sorry, this pen doesn’t write, just a minute.” My patience is wearing thin.

“Ah, I found a pencil, shoot.” I do feel like shooting her. I shoot, not once but twice or thrice thanks to some disturbance on the phone. Her voice sounds feeble. “Thanks”.

The phone rings again. In all probability, the scrap of paper on which she jotted the number must have been blown off by the breeze, and she is calling again. Yes, it is her number, I can see the callers ID.

Terribly disgruntled, I pick up the phone  and say”Hello” in the sternest tone possible.

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you, we have a meeting on Thursday, at 4 pm in the office.”

This is one of the disadvantages of being “efficient”, “patient???”  and wearing the mask of being available any time, anywhere, any place without exhibiting the slightest irritation.

“Okay, okay…” I bang the phone down.

Where was I? Making the list of dos for the day. Time management,and organising, you know. I believe in jotting it all down in a diary. Not for me the sticky notes and the computer menu pages.   Hell, where’s that pen? I search my desk all over, look into the drawers. Not a single pen. I rush to the dining room. The sideboard in our dining room  has a drawer for pens,  a pad for writing the lists for the market etc. My dear mother makes sure there are pens in the drawer. I pull it open. Not a single pen. I make a beeline for the bedroom. I keep a pad and pen next to my bed, to scrawl ideas, for stories, columns, letters lest the ideas vanish as fast as they come.  No pen. I dare not peep into my husband’s desk. I usually dump all the pens which don’t write on his desk, and the unwritten law is that he makes them writeable and transfers them  back to my desk.

My late grandfather had a terrific idea. He used to use thin twine to tie the pens to a corner of his desk, also the stapler, for we grandchildren would not think twice borrowing his pens, staplers, gem clips, punching machine and cellotape and scissors and not returning them. Each of these precious possessions would be carefully fixed to remain in place, and while we were at liberty to use them, we had to move to his desk to get our job done. He did this for our telephone table, so we could take messages with the pen tethered for safety. We found this extremely useful, till one day we found the string snapped and the pen removed, and after a slight tap on his forehead, Thatha washed his hands off the security issue, and said we could use ingenious methods to keep the pen in place as he had no use for the phone anyway…

When we were schooling we had a lesson in our English textbook. It was titled Mr. Nobody. He came into our own lives rather forcefully. When the school bag was missing,  it was Mr. Nobody who misplaced it. Where had the socks disappeared? One was in the shoe, but the other? Of course Mr. Nobody was the one who hid the wretched thing. So also pens, pencils, erasers, handkerchiefs, notebooks, timetables were all seized by Mr. Nobody.

Then we hit upon a brilliant idea. There was a chest of drawers in my mother’s room, and one drawer was kept for us. I christened it the “kacham bucham” drawer.  If we couldn’t find something, we would blame it on Mr Nobody, and then get reprimanded by our parents who told us to search in the KB drawer. Funny how the name stuck right through our growing years.  If you searched hard enough wading through shoe laces, pencils, pens, scraps of papers, in all probability you would find what you were looking for.

I firmly resolved not to provide a KB drawer for my children and decided everything would go into the right slot. Except pens which had a miraculous way of just walking away from one room to the other till they disappeared altogether. My prized possessions given by dear ones, who understand my penchant for collecting pens ( I am a writer, remember?) like the Sheaffers, the Cross and the Parker are all under lock and key. Each has a story. The gold Cross pen was presented to me by my Hindi school teacher, who decided to give it to me when we met a couple of years ago.  “To my prize student,” he wrote on the box. He recently passed away, but the pen is a precious acquisition.

Deciding last week to clear out my handbag, I found an assortment of pens, more than half a dozen of every size and colour and some which I forgot I possessed. A few looked like aliens, and luckily they were the write and throw ones. I blushed as I arranged them on the tray.  A voice at the back chanted,  “So now we know who is the pen thief!”

The Essence of Time

This is a recent article published in The Hindu, about my book, Quick Cook.

If you’re waging a battle with the clock while preparing food every day, then this cookbook is for you

Sabita Radhakrishna is used to starting trends. She pioneered the boutique concept in Chennai with Amrapali. Then she went from being a gifted home cook to cookbook author in what she calls, a “happy mistake that I never meant to make.” Now she’s launched her latest cookbook, The Quick Cook.

It all starts with the basics. “Pre-preparation is the backbone of quick cooking,” Sabita writes. She says, “I’ve provided recipes for basic masala powders in this book. Make it ahead and refrigerate it — you never know when it’ll come in handy.”

Sketched out as a series of menus, the book is all about preparing a meal within 60 minutes. “It’s the ultimate lesson on time management, targeted towards the younger, working audience who don’t have time to make a balanced meal,” she says.

While each menu promises a balanced, nutritious meal in just an hour or less, the menus also contain standalone dishes. If you doubt your ability to cook a 60-minute meal don’t worry: it has been tried and tested. “My niece became a quick cook after I wrote this book because for every recipe, we would go into the kitchen and set the alarm. Sixty minutes exactly, with only a recipe in hand. It was a pleasant surprise when some of them took even less time!”

Then again, not every recipe can live up to the claim, and Sabita knows it. “None of the desserts have time estimations. Baking is an exact science, and my desserts are no different.”

Ladling out a spinach-and-corn tart for us to try gives an idea of what the book holds. Sabita showcases some continental delights but doesn’t neglect the home favourites like rava dosai and Kancheepuram idli.

And for the strict vegetarians there are substitutions. Helpful hints pepper the end of many menus; notes that Sabita has taken while preparing the meals herself.

So what’s in the works next? Another cookbook of course. “I don’t mean to write any of them. They happen by chance... Just when I think I’m done, another request comes. And I love food too much to say no.”

The Quick Cook is priced at Rs. 399.