COTTON

 

 

My childhood is intrinsically linked to the sight, feel and smell of cotton  saris. Synthetic saris were not in fashion those days. So there were Tangail or handloom cotton saris for home use, washed and rewashed, soft, smelling faintly of soap and sun. And there were saris for going out, starched, stiff, which rustled when you moved.

There were also saris for doing household chores, stained with turmeric, damp with perspiration. I remember my mother and aunts in the kitchen in front of kerosene  or baked clay stoves, and later gas stoves, beads of sweat pearling their foreheads, staining the back and armpits of their blouses, wiping their foreheads, necks, and wet hands with their  anchol (the part of the sari which is draped over the shoulder and hangs till the hip or lower).

After they had finished cooking they had a bath and changed into a fresh set of underskirt, blouse and saris. The saris for home use were mostly striped, or unicolor, pale green , pink, yellow, violet with stripes at the ends, or with small and big checks. I have this picture of my ma fresh after  her  bath in front of  an oval  mirror. After lightly dusting her face with Pond’s talcum powder she opened her sindoor (red powder) box and with a small piece of metal , part of the kit , which is rounded and flattened  at one end , she drew a small red dot in the middle of her forehead. Tiny flecks of sindoor inevitably came loose and  speckled the bridge her nose . She then dipped the other end of the stick flattened horizontally into the sindoor and drew a thin red line in the parting of her hair. This was and is probably the daily ritual of many married women in Bengal.

In the evening, just before sunset women blew conches in front of tulsi  plants and offered their evening prayers.  Tulsi  a variety of basil is considered to be a sacred plant in India and even referred to as mother tulsi). The plaintive, nasal , resonance of conches rose and faded into the air .Women  usually changed into unbleached beige silk saris, reserved for this occasion.  I remember the feel of these saris, soft and heavy they smelt faintly of incense and of some undefinable comforting odour, perhaps that of the body of the wearer.   My youngest aunt, a fair, short, roundish woman  with a particularly devout husband performed this evening ritual regularly.

After the puja was over they changed back into their day sari, or sometimes into another sari which they would wear through the evening and the night. If there were guests coming home or if they were  going out anywhere it called for a change of sari and of blouse to match with the sari.

There must have been a mountain of clothes to wash  everyday! The size of a sari can vary from 5 to 9 metres. Then there were underskirts, blouses, tunics and dhotis or  pyjamas worn by the menfolk and children’s clothes to wash. The hands of the poor women who were employed to do the washing were disfigured due to endless hours of exposure to soap and water.  

Once a week however  Modon the dhobi/washerman came home to collect the washing of the entire joint family which he returned the week after. A short wiry man with curly hair in a thigh length tunic and a calf length dhoti he announced his presence in a loud voice. He went from family to family collecting clothes and distributing the ones he had washed, starched and ironed. He tied all the clothes in a big, white bundle which he slung over his shoulders and left . I was nine when I left my childhood home and took all this for granted. Now I ask myself how did he carry all the clothes? Did he sling them over the back of a donkey like the picture of the proverbial Indian washerman? Did he have a cycle? 

Arunima