BENGALURU: If you’ve ever wondered how weavers remember each and every step of the weaving process, Saiful Islam, a renowned textile revivalist of the original Dhakai Jamdani, let out the secret at the screening and discussion on his documentary Legend of the Loom at an event organised by Taneira, a handwoven saree brand. For his documentary, he travelled to the  UK, USA, France, Italy, India and Bangladesh, and came across a weaver who memorised the order in the form of a poem, which acts as a mnemonic of sorts. “Tip the thread, pick up the thread...” all of them are encompassed in a 30-line poem, Islam shared. “When I asked another weaver about this poem, he immediately recited it. He had no clue how or where he had picked it up. It was just within him,” said Islam, adding that despite the craft being at the brink of extinction, the “human mind and soul have a way of remembering things.” “Somewhere, it’s being carried forward in generational memory. That, to me, is fascinating,” he said.

As he unravelled the story of muslin, he also shared other tidbits of information that took him by surprise during the documentary’s making. “A Muslim weaver I came across prayed to lord Vishnu before he started work each time. He did so only because his work is about creation. This goes to show that art surpasses people and politics,” he said.

While he admitted that the British drew artificial boundaries, he also pointed out that we have the  ability to alter the wrongs of history. “An identity, pride of place, and a way of life is disappearing,” he said, adding that involving government bureaucrats in an artistic process doesn’t help. “They only interfere with the artistic process. Take for instance the Khadi Cooperative set up in West Bengal, near Behrampore, which stands without any of the workers actually working from there. All of them work from home. It was the building for which `60 lakh was spent on the building,” he said, adding that a way for weavers to sell their products directly to customers must be found.  

Case in point: If a muslin saree costs `50,000, more half the amount goes to the middle-man and the final amount that the weavers receive does no justice to the amount of work that goes in – sometimes even up to two months just for one saree. “A person working at a garments’ factory earns twice as much,” he said.    
While in today’s world there are lot of varieties of jamdhani, in its classical form it is 100 per cent cotton. “My idea is to borrow but not distort tradition. It could last another 100 years if we do something to ensure its survival,” he said, adding that while power looms can be employed into the process, it’s like a robot painting a Picasso.