Often, when I buy a handcrafted product, my enthusiasm is as much for how it looks as it is for the people in faraway villages who’ve made it. Why do they make what they make? What does their own handiwork mean to them? These are the sorts of things I wonder about. That is why I so enjoyed my recent encounter with Shabnam Ramaswamy, of the Murshidabad-based NGO, Street Survivors India. The organisation operates a school and Katna’s Kantha, a project through which self-help groups of village women create and sell beautiful Kantha products. “When we were developing plans for income-generation programmes here, Kantha was the obvious choice. It’s something women in every home in these parts do!” she said. She explained how Kantha traditionally referred to a soft comforter fashioned from layer upon layer of old saris stitched together, with stitches as small as – to use the local scale of measurement – fish eggs!
Traditionally, Kantha plays an important role in people’s lives — from when they’re born to the day they depart this world. When a woman conceives, she starts making a Kantha with the softest old saris to swaddle her baby. The esteem in which a person is held is symbolised by the beauty and intricacy of the Kantha in which he’s finally shrouded. When a funeral cortege passes through the village, people look at, and talk about, the quality of the shroud, which is obviously a Kantha. “I remember going to see the children of a lady who’d just died. They were hugging the last Kantha that she’d worked upon, crying that her special scent still lingered within its softness,” said Ramaswamy. Even today, she said, rural folk judge young girls not on their appearance or on how well they cook, but on the fineness of their Kantha! How did something so woven into the warp and weft of everyday life manage to find its way into shops and boutiques in the metros? I asked.
Ramaswamy laughed. “It was quite a challenge! Our artisans traditionally only stitched Kanthas of sari width [since they were from old saris] and five-and-a-half arm lengths. But this was an odd size commercially…” Instead, Ramaswamy replaced old saris with new, appropriately sized fabrics, which many artisans found blasphemous! Getting the look right was also a challenge. “Since Kanthas were always made for personal consumption, often stitched with threads pulled out of old saris, how they actually looked wasn’t very important. We had to get the artisans to understand the importance of neat and well-finished products,” she said.
In spite of the hurdles, the first time they exhibited, in a 2005 Dastkar exhibition, Katna’s Kantha products were a hit. “People even bought the traditional sari-width comforters, even though they hadn’t a clue as to what they’d do with them!” said Ramaswamy. This experience made the artisans in faraway Murshidabad understand that the craft they had always taken for granted could actually help them earn a living — which renewed their efforts to keep within the quality parameters. “We conducted training sessions and workshops with designers,” said Ramaswamy.
Today, the label Katna’s Kantha represents the collective effort of over 250 women from more than 22 villages in Murshidabad. The women sit in sunny nooks, gossiping as they create piece after exquisite piece of Kantha saris, stoles, bedspreads and more. The only difference is that now they’re earning a sizeable income from it. It is as if Kantha, their way of life, has given them a more dignified life to live.