Keya Sarkar: Looks can deceive

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

My interest in textiles often leads me to ask weavers that I meet whether I can visit their home. My desire is to witness the intricacies of different looms and to then think of new designs keeping the constraints of the particular loom in mind. Most of the weavers that I meet do not take me seriously. Particularly so in mid-May. Not a time for adventure in Birbhum district. But thanks to my insistence they finally relent and give me directions, nearby phone booth numbers and now more and more mobile numbers of sons and sons-in-law.

Last week four of us (my partner, a young girl who assists me with design and a young boy who does the follow-up with the weavers once they have been explained to and I) set off for Abhadanga, a village of weavers, about 35 kilometres (takes an hour-and-a-half thanks to the roads) from Santiniketan. We snacked on the sandwiches I was carrying, halfway, and stopped at a roadside tea shop. The colour of the jalebis and the potato chops on display silenced my fellow travellers who not very long ago were chastising me for being over-cautious and carrying sanitised sandwiches. As we drove through the rice fields (the way in which each farmer stacks his hay is a design lesson in itself), we were commenting on how it may not be too difficult even if we have to keep visiting (working on new weaving patterns does call for patience) because the journey was so beautiful.

When we reached by ten, many of the neighbours peeped out to see who was visiting. Any car that gets into a quiet village always draws its share of stares. At the weaver's house we had the customary tea and sweets that the weaver's wife and daughter-in-law served us, all the time insisting on fanning us because it was hot. By twelve we had visited the looms that he works on, explained the experiments that we wanted, settled on the price and delivery dates and were ready to leave.

As is normal, the entire family (three generations of them) came to the end of the road to see us to our car. While we were saying goodbyes, my partner had already got into the car. Very soon we realised there was a crisis. The car wouldn't start. By then it was past noon and the sun was scorching. I was telling myself to remain calm, despite the fact that there was no mechanic in miles, the morning bus to Santiniketan had long left and the rickshaw vans were the only other mode of transport. To get to Labhpur, the slightly larger village nearby, would take us an hour by that mode! The weaver's family looked worried. Not so much because they would have to cook lunch all over again but because their visitors' car breaking down in full view of the village is not great for their prestige.

By then we had figured out that it was a battery issue and a village lad who said he was a driver wanted to try his hand at setting it right. But he also called the battery mechanic at Labhpur and shouted into the phone that a Maruti "SWITCH" needed help. We don't know what the mechanic said but our helpful driver then tried Maruti "SWEET"! The fact that he was wearing only a towel which seemed like it would come off any minute didn't exactly evoke huge faith but he did open the bonnet anyway. Apparently a wire had come off and he fixed it. We were hugely relieved and so were our hosts.

There was great pride in the faces of the villagers that had gathered around us by then. We were told how bright this young lad was, as people got involved in instructing us on how to turn the car! There was an old man sitting in the shade who got up and came near the car as we were about to leave. "Just clean the battery with hot water every morning and you will never have problems," he said with almost a sneer.