INDIA BEATS
Lifting the shroud
MITA KAPUR
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An eco-friendly project in Rajasthan not only fuels creativity but generates income and gives women a purposeful sense of self.
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Photo: Mita Kapur
Pride in their work: The women and the bangles they make.
SHARDA cannot remember when she got married. She thinks she was nine years old then. She has an eight-year-old son. Tending the goats, working in the fields, cooking, cleaning, sitting with other women in the village was her life. Bhanwari has lived
the same life, having brought up four children. Chanda’s eyes sparkle behind her ghunghat. She is only 25 but has borne four children and can’t remember when she had her first child. So what is new? We’ve heard these
tales before –— it has enraged some of us, some may have clucked over the fate of rural women in their plush drawing rooms, some have formed NGOs to empower such women… We’ve heard this before too.
When human ingenuity, nature’s bounty and a world that wears a shroud come together to work in tandem, creation takes on a new momentum. Its coming into being lifts the shroud, clears the dust, lets that glimmer of hope filter in for Chanda, Sharda, Bhanwari and many more. Eighty women in four villages in the Taal Chapar district of Rajasthan work for two hours everyday to make fashion and household accessories from weeds that grow randomly on the roadside and in the desert scrub areas. Akda –— the weed’s bark is peeled, dried, dyed in natural colours and wrapped around a frame to create bangles in vibrant colours. Turquoise blues, indigos, burnt oranges, sunny yellows, elegant whites, flaming reds –— name the colour and it’s there.
The earthy look
The design of each bangle varies, in contrasting colours, in the way the weed is woven around it, with beads stuck on them, with rope used for the earthy look. Coloured thread recycled from waste material is bought from the market at Rs. five or Rs. 10, to be used for making not just bangles but also table mats, coasters, rugs, baskets, bags and funky earrings. It’s fascinating to see a pair of earrings made out of a weed’s branch, just dipped into breathtaking aqua, inverted and a hook strung through it, leaves et al. A model on a ramp in Paris will soon be wearing this pair. Munj, another grass that grows wild in this area, is dried and dyed into bright hues to create mats, durries and stylish bags
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Working hours have to be during the day, using sunlight, since these villages don’t have electricity. The women get paid Rs. 20 for two hours of work –— a sum that a beldaar (a labourer) earns for an eight to 10 ho
ur back breaking day. Five bangles are made by one person in this time. With their heads bent sincerely over their work, the women looked happy: “we want to continue this work, it’s much better than sitting at home; we want to learn more.” “I like the feeling that I’m earning”; “my mother-in-law is very happy there is some extra money coming into the house, she encourages me.” Their earning goes into running the house. They don’t have the liberty to spend it on themselves –— such thoughts don’t exist in their psyche. A need-based existence for the marginalised stares in the face –— a stark contrast with the colours they weave into dreamy designs.
After Khadi’s revival and its success story, Bibi Russell came to Taal Chapar on the Chief Minister’s behest. Bibi had wondered what she’d be able to do here since there was no textile in this area but took it up as a challenge. For
her it was like lapsing into a time machine –— with no electricity, no TV, no Internet, “no samosas either”. But Bibi is confident this project will work wonders and the products will sell in the international m
arket: “The Taal Chapar project will be better than the Khadi project.”
Whatever Bibi makes in Bangladesh is also being sold in the same market. She quips, “I’m creating competition for myself.” Besides creating a craft that is so closely linked to nature, she had to think beyond Rajasthan to create designs, patterns that are unique and have never been marketed before. It wasn’t an easy process. She spent her first two visits to these villages “just talking to the people, trying to make them trust and believe in me.” To teach women in these villages the skill, Bibi has her project managers who stay there to monitor, train, create every bit of the products. She works late into the night to come up with new patterns for bangles, earrings, mats etc. Doing the rounds of all four villages each day is routine. “Now that they’ve learnt the skills, there is a regular income, they’re having fun working. They come dressed in their best to work in this small room but it’s the feeling that they have…”
The salt content in the water in this area of Rajasthan made processing very difficult for Bibi. She took the weeds back to Bangladesh to research on the dyeing and colouring to come up with products made of weed, grass and recycled thread. She wants each home to become a manufacturing unit to enable them to derive sustainable income with a monitoring head to ensure constant demand and supply. The project is funded by the government but the marketing of the products rests solely on Bibi and her efforts. At a recent exhibition in Jaipur, a test run of all Taal Chapar products proved to be a success –— they were the only stall that sold out completely.
Proving a point
“When I walk through the corridors of the world, they question me at all the big dos, for me it’s essential to prove to them that this ‘Asian lady’ will achieve all this by living in a jungle.” Working three hours in Bangladesh helps me save one life, she says. Bibi has plans to work in Gujarat to revive handmade textile but is waiting for the appropriate opportunity. She has worked at the grassroots in Africa and now wants to turn her attention to reviving hand embroidery in Afghanistan before it dies out. Scheduled to make a speech along with Bill Gates as a U.N. Ambassador in Germany, Bibi was excited: “Bill made millions doing different things, I saved millions –— people, not money. I also make money but it’s like looking at business from two different angles. I will make sure these women earn up to Rs. 100 per day and that it carries on.”
In Bangladesh, Bibi has six villages, working to meet export orders of 20,000 water hyacinth bangles every month and she evinces, “I don’t want people to say I’m doing less than what I do in Bangladesh. I’m doing more varieties here. The forest department and Rukmini Haldia with their modern approach will work to perpetuate this project.” An eco-friendly project that fuels creativity, generates income and gives women a sense of self. Those bags made from mu
nj ropes could well be sitting on the glass shelves of some up-market boutique in a metropolis. A fine effort in the field of micro-finance, there is a lot of passion here –— one can see it when Bibi walks into the room and all the women flock around her –— “she’s nice, we like her, but we don’t understand her language,” they laugh.
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