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The Woraiyur wonder
KAUSALYA SANTHANAM
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The saris have benefited from the designers’ touch to attract young buyers and herald changing tastes.
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Our designs were inspired by market and other eclectic scenes. — Priya Mani.
Photo: K. Pichumani
LIGHT AND ETHNIC: Woraiyur saris on display at Thillaiyadi Valliammai Co-optex Showroom.
The saris are called ’Thiruvarangam.’
The Fine Arts Department of Stella Maris College was engaged in a project with the weavers.
This self effacing suburb seems to cleave to the town of Tiruchi seeking an identity. But Woraiyur, an ancient centre of the textile trade, was once full of energy. From classical Greece and Rome came merchants to this grand capital of the Imperial C
holas.
We drive through the rough lanes to the weavers’ colony. As we turn a corner, we see the looms set up in the middle of the street. Two elderly men are at work on a sari that runs like an emerald green river between wooden banks hedged with the wavy (vanki) design of the typical narrow border.
We enter the tiled houses that are more than a hundred years old. The traditional colours of the South — deep reds, bright yellows and blues- weave their symphony to delight the senses here. “Whether we do well financially or not, these saris — light, durable and strong — will always be in demand in the villages around,” says weaver Munuswamy while his wife Sivakami nods shy assent. “Even educated working women in the area, doctors and lawyers, drive up to the nearby cooperative and leave with armfuls of the Woraiyur weaves,” they add.
The Woraiyur Devanga Weavers’ Cooperative Society is an old house converted into an office with a sales outlet at the entrance. Here saris are available at absurdly reasonable prices considering the labour that goes into their making.
In the cool interior, the former secretary Selvarajan tells us about the measures taken to encourage the weavers. The cooperative was started in 1936 with 50 members, he says and the government provided housing. “We now have 327 members though at one time there were 700. We used to sell Rs.50 lakhs worth of goods a year, now it has come down to Rs.30 lakhs. We are unable to compete with the power loom. Seventy per cent of the members are above 50 years old as youngsters don’t like to come into the field. Weavers now prefer to become watchmen as they get Rs.1,500 a month whereas even if we work steadily throughout the month we get only Rs.2,000.The money we receive is just enough for food, not for education and medical needs,” he says.
Cooptex sponsor
The Woraiyur wares have benefited from the designers’ touch to attract younger buyers as well and to adapt the product to changing tastes. The centre was selected for a Strategic Design Intervention for Handloom Clusters Project, sponsored by the Government of Tamil Nadu, Department of Handlooms and Textiles. The National Institute of Design (NID) was asked to implement the project. The Cooptex has taken on the role of sponsoring and marketing the saris. Selvarajan waves a gossamer fine dupatta in non-traditional pastel colours, a product of the workshop conducted by Priya Mani, lead designer for the project. “She helped us a great deal and at the exhibition at Lalit Kala Academi in Chennai, the dupattas and saris were a complete sell-out. If you want to buy the Woraiyur weaves at Chennai, Co-optex showrooms in Egmore, Teynampet and Anna Nagar stock them,” says Krishnan, Manager of the Mariamma Salaiyur Weavers’ Cooperative Society.
The present secretary Veeraiyyan enumerates the steps needed to popularise the textiles: more exhibitions and advertisements, integrated handloom development projects for longer periods to facilitate the weavers to produce samples (or else they return to the familiar easily worked designs) and more advertisements.Yarn at cheaper rates and better quality will go a long way in helping the weavers. “Public sector undertakings should make them uniforms for women staff like the BHEL has done,” point out the weavers.
“A lot of people now ask for the “Thiruvarangam” saris (as we have named them),” says M.P.Nirmala, Special Officer and Managing Director of Co-optex, who is committed to the cause of the weavers.
At Woraiyur, the chorus line is the same — youngsters are no longer interested in pursuing this hereditary vocation which goes back to the time when the weavers from the great Vijayanagar empire wended their way South to weave their fine cotton magic. The plight of the weavers is such that many feel they should be brought under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme.
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
|
