He was a little man, hunched up over a sewing machine in a dark little shop in Leh. Surrounded by yards of colourful brocade, lanterns and wall hangings adorning his walls, it seemed as if he were sitting in a cave full of glittering treasure. A sign over the shop proclaimed that he was a Thangka tailor, which intrigued me immensely. He was ironing out some appliqué work when I walked in.
His name, said he, was Bashir: “I used to be an ordinary tailor in Delhi,” said he, “until a relative from Dharamshala introduced me to Thangka tailoring.” There was no looking back. “Shirts and kurtas seem so mundane in comparison,” said he, “to framing Thangkas, paintings of Buddhist gods and religious symbols. We’ve to cut and join together scores of pieces of brocade. The skill isn’t just in stitching them neatly to frame the painting, but also in balancing colours and fabric weaves. The best painting can get totally destroyed if the Thangka tailor makes a hash of it!”
Everything he made, he explained, was for the use and adornment of Buddhist temples, big and small. “Everyone here has shrines in their homes, where they hang Thangka paintings, brocade wall hangings and lanterns.” What was business like, I asked. He replied that it was great, as Ladakhi Buddhists are mostly very religious. Also, a lot of tourists pick up his wall hangings and lanterns as souvenirs.
The finest work, said he, used to be done in the old days, when tailors like him were considered respected artists. “They’d applique silk Thangkas, creating beautiful figures from hundreds of hand-cut pieces of brocade. Satin threads and horse hair were used to embroider the outlines and details of the figure,” he told me. These Thangkas took months of back-breaking work to complete. Usually, monasteries ordered such Thangkas to be draped down from their roofs on special occasions.
Things are very different today. “Now, we make cheaper paintings that common people can afford. While the sales are good, I still sometimes dream of making one gorgeous big Thangka…” he trailed off. He went back to working very pointedly, and I left.
Something niggled at the back of my mind hours after I’d met him, and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. When I realised what it was, I went back to his dark shop: “Where are you from?” I asked, he looked at me warily and said he was from Nepal. “Funny,” said I, “for you sound like you’re from eastern UP — my part of the world!” He shifted uneasily, “well it does border with Nepal, doesn’t it? That’s where I’m from…”
It turned out that Bashir was from Gorakhpur: “But whoever’s heard of a Thangka tailor from UP? So I always tell customers I’m from Nepal, which isn’t strictly untrue as my village is on the border,” said he.
Bashir came to work in Leh every year from May to October, the end of the tourist season. The rest of the time, he farmed his family land back home. “I earn a lot of money this way,” said he, “there’s no scope for business in my village!” Sometimes, said he, he’d go across to Nepal to get Chinese brocade at good prices.
“That improves my profit margins further,” he explained. Did he use Benarsi silks at all, I asked. He replied, “sometimes, but they’re quite inferior to Chinese brocades…”
Was there anything he liked about eastern UP, I asked facetiously. He replied: “Not really…if only I’d been born a couple of kilometres ahead, I’d have been Nepali!”
