Colours

 

The colour of distance was a kaleidoscope –

glass shards, shiny dreams mixed in with river gravel,

wildflowers flattened by raindrops, dusted with hope,

a lone evening star pierced by a mountaintop,

the primordial rhythms of footsteps, sands and travel.

 

Everything isn’t a journey, there’s standing still

to observe the intent rain trickle down your nape.

Everything isn’t colour. Endless climb uphill.

It’s picking up a seashell too, and watch it fill

with rain and ocean, reflect you and the landscape.

 

The colour of home, in contrast, was more specific

tending to terracotta – burnt clay pots and pans,

a mud-wide riverside, a wall of exposed brick,

my father’s wedding ring, my mother’s old ceramic

mug of clear black Darjeeling steaming in her hands.

Everything isn’t home and home’s not everything.

There’s being alone, a stranger, under vaster skies,

the thrill of unknown earth, unknown paths beckoning,

the bone deep peace of trees, the flash of a birdwing,

feet firmly on strange tracks with nothing recognised.

I came across this book title and a quote from it - 'you can't go home again' by Thomas Wolfe, a famous author from North Carolina. The quote's been buzzing around my head...it has permeated everything I've written subsequently, home and away, the various shades of homecoming and unhomecoming. Someday I would like to get my hands on this book. 

Amazon offered me a free audio version - but you know me, my neural pathways are paved in concrete and it's too late to change their preferences - audio isn't remotely as satisfying as a regular printed book with that crisp papery feel between thumb and fingers. It might work for a short story, but don't see how I am to manage with audio for a 700+ page novel. Hubby keeps extolling the various virtues of audiobooks - no shelfspace requirement apart from being practically free, no stress on eyes etc etc, but the heart wants what it wants. No arguments possible with that.

Which do you prefer  - audio or printed? Hope your week is filled with colours and books in your preferred avatars. Have a blissful one. 

Palace of Dreams

 

Didn’t you always crave a lemon tree,

a mango or two, the smell of summer?

A clematis trailing the exposed bricks?

Didn’t you always dream what this would be?

Less concrete and curtains and more runner

beans, citrus suns, hiraeth edging homesick.

The tides of jasmine covering for the sea.

Halfway to a sonnet, half a bit firmer

and freeing itself of every metric 

to lace into an amorphous canopy.

An empty sparrow’s nest in one corner.

A bare bulb somewhere, nothing idyllic.

Rain filling up the sky and rusting grills.

The paving dusted with hibiscus pistils.

July has run into August and I'm pedalling furiously to catch up somehow but always falling behind, always out of breath and vaguely puzzled as to why this is happening. The idea is to post the first and last Sundays/Mondays but I think the first one has slipped by without my realising it. Oh well, what's done is done, or rather what's left undone cannot be done retrospective, only done late. Anyway, better late than never.

August is always a busy month - lots of family and personal milestones, apart from the big national holiday coming up on the 15th. So offline life will muscle in and shove aside the online one - guaranteed. A few years ago this would have upset me, I'd have scheduled stuff and not missed a single Sunday...but one evolves - I no longer obsess about things I can't help, I don't know for sure if that's a good thing but it doesn't feel like a bad one. 'Do what you can with as much as you have and let the rest go' - I'm still internalising things I should have done years ago. Better late than never...

Wishing you a smooth and tranquil week ahead.

 

Common Ground

 

I do not know your music tastes,

I do not know your friends.

Both you and I are short of space,

in between continents.

And you and I are being ground down

by the acts of governments.

We don't share any talking points

but likely the same ends. 

I know you, brother, even though

your language is not mine,

your home location is on a

different meridian line.

And nowhere do our orbits touch,

nowhere our lives combine,

yet they're exactly parallel,

yet they somehow align.

I know that resolve in your eyes,

that tremor in your hands

as the ground beneath us buckles

throughout our separate lands.

I know that grimness on your lips

as you rise to take a stand -

I may not know your music tastes

but the rest I understand. 

This one is for those who carry on, who don't get discouraged, who fight for a braver, better, more equal, more just and a peaceful world.

I hope the coming week will be better than the past one for all of us. Have a good one. 

Bookmarks

 

You used to remember the exact page,

now you find yourself reaching for bookmarks

and put it down to incipient age –

the wrists a bit stiff, the spines a bit dark,

the sense somehow vague, the words somewhat blurred,

and following the plot requiring more work,

the pristine white of leaves somewhat more weathered.

 

The eyes and the wrists instinctively know

where and when to rest, where and how to stop,

what to hold steadfast and what to let go,

which ones to explore and which to just drop.

The flesh isn’t weak – it can push its limits

but it’s just plain wise, it knows to give up,

to withdraw, shut down and blindly submit.

It isn't really about bookmarks now, is it? 

It's to do with not faffing around. It's about consciously choosing the growth path of the patience quotient. Becoming patient with stuff that matters but ruthlessly uncompromising with how the minutes, even the seconds are used. Zero waste. Tomorrow is not a given, it never was, only you were having too much fun to notice. And ignorance may be bliss but it is still ignorance and it certainly ends up being wasteful. Time's limited, space is too, you are more than halfway, oh, much more than that, to using up your quotas.  

Those few seconds you've just spent in locating the exact para where you left off? Nope, they are not coming back. Therefore, no harm in being lean and mean with how the balance is spent. A little more mindfulness in cutting to the chase and cramming in as much ___ (love, food, fun, laughter, hiking, skydiving, reading, blogging, partying, catching up with friends, etc. - insert as appropriate) as possible while you're at it. If bookmarks can help with that...bring them on!

Have a lovely week ahead. 

Low profile and no frills

 

I’ve had my share of heartbreak, so I know

that extremes of emotions don’t endure, 

the pinnacles of happiness and sorrow

we reach today are left behind tomorrow

and time’s a poor healer, nature’s more sure.

 

The heart has an innate tendency to veer

back to the middle paths – plain contentment.

Not as bejewelled as joy, not as austere

as grief, just a low-profile, no-frills cheer,

easy to wear and not as quickly spent.

Well, it's hard to hang onto that low profile cheerfulness right now, mostly because I'm stressed about my friends in Bahrain, the Fifth Fleet is located there and might be a target. Palestine, Ukraine, Pahalgam and now Iran. The whole world's a massive battlefront. Not to mention flights plummeting and places of worship exploding with terrorists and sundry other disasters. 

These too will pass, everything does, but there's little comfort in that if what they will pass onto is a trainwreck. 

No time like the present. To practice the deep breathing and count to ten techniques. Look at flowers blooming, walk on hill paths, listen to the water somewhere. And of course, write/read some poetry.  Whatever calms things down inside the head and heart and ensures they carry on in spite of the chaos all around. 

Wishing you a calm, stress free week ahead. 

Stranger Earth

 

I don’t know this city without your footprints

marking out the roads, buildings, the streetlights

glinting on your glasses, your voice mapping

the terrain of neighbourhoods, days and nights.

I don’t know this place, it’s strangely different –

the waters an acrid shade of grey and white,

the neon signs of advertisements pulsing

like a news ticker from a disaster site.

Everything is where it was, yet it isn’t

as if the ground has shifted, ever so slight,

as if the earth’s somehow lost its mooring,

as if the sky’s fallen from a great height.

Grief is a half done crossword by your chair,

an absence the shape of your feet on the stairs.

Compartmentalise

 

You can watch the birds from the terrace here.

The tangle of wires slices the sky thin

and shrinks the views, but still, it’s been a good year -

the mynah’s back, so are the crow and pigeon.

The  doves and, in their season, the cuckoos.

There’s birdsong, even if you don’t get the views.

 

The drongos like beads on an abacus

the sparrows of unremarkable throats -

ordinary plumage’s all around us.

Put off that search for remote scenic spots.

Bird calls rise with the light and urban fumes,

the city ebbs from the terrace and the rooms.

~~~

Gosh, May's ending already? The months are vanishing faster than ever, I don't know if that's a good, time-flies-when-you're-happy/busy sign or an ominous one of days outstripping my capacity to keep up. Let's go for the positive one - I'm all for the feel good, steady boat themes. 

Lots happening as usual - workmen in the house, trips to the eye doctors, an antho submission, thank goodness the war noises have stopped, let's keep everything here small, personal, worm eye level. Because what's happening out in the world is kind of overwhelming, to put it mildly. I'm borrowing a line from one of my favourite fictional characters - 'I'll think about that tomorrow.'

Another line from another favourite character, real not fictional this time - 'a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between does what he wants to do.' That's Bob Dylan, his birthday went by a couple days back, happy birthday sirji! - from this fan. 

By his definition, which I expect holds for women too, I am success enough. I listen for the birdsong. Focus on the wires, treetops, clouds. Block out the incessant noise at ground level. Read a little. Write a little. Compartmentalise. 

Have a happy-busy, time-flies type week ahead.

Choose your own title

 

View from shikara. May-June 1981. A long ago and far away Kashmir.

All night long I dozed fitfully

dreamt of elephants crossing the Alps,

of Carthage and Rome. Deep furrows of salt.

And oaks and pines, higher than gothic spires

made into Viking masts sailing cold seas.

The children kept waking, fretting, calling.

Mother. Father. What’s that? Is that shelling?

Why does the horizon glow so eerie red?

What is that horrible smell on the breeze?

I quietened them, wrapped them in my steeled arms

inches from where my heart was racing against theirs

sang them lullabies my grandmothers once crooned.

Go to sleep, the light of my eyes,

horizons get eerie just before sunrise,

thunder carries in the stillness before dawn,

they’re somewhere far over the mountains,

somewhere far from home.

 

Grandmothers used to say that everything

that you were destined for, or that was destined

for you, had your name written clear on it –

grains, cups, ganga jom’na paar, scars, bullets.

They were women gnarled by hardships, moulded

by wars, collaterally damaged inside

and out. Fault lines, frontlines and famines grew

them to formidable heights and shapes, staunch,

unflinching as fortresses. They had the right

lullabies to soothe children to sleep

during battles and in peacetimes. They could

slice fruits translucently thin and feed hundreds

from one handful of rice and two fishes.

They knew how to stare down famines, disease,

unknown, eerie red horizons. Burnt paddies

wafting in on the breeze. They rarely slept

through the night. Dreaming wasn’t an option.

 

The dawn comes in overcast. No more sound.

No birdsong, nor call to prayer, not even

the faintest shelling, nothing but the clouds

emptied of the death threats. The horizon

innocent of flashes and our senses

suspicious of this explosive silence.

The street’s pockmarked with thumbprints of conflict.

The news comes later, trickles in through phones

on grapevines of fear. There’s a ceasefire.

Is it over? Father? Shall we go back

to school? May I go fishing now, Mother?

An army vehicle clatters down the street

checking for last evacuees. I scoop up

my grandmother’s old hand knitted blanket.

She’d knitted my name in it. We step out

and I notice, as if for the first time –

the door has my name carved on it as well.

Title 1) Mother's Day 2025

Title 2) Carved names

Title 3) Ceasefire

Title 4) Compose your own

Please let me know your choice in the comments. The title is the hardest part.

I'm glad there's a ceasefire. Anything that brings peace closer is to be welcomed. Not sure it will lead to anything lasting though. And I'm gutted at the way it has come about. 

Once upon a time our PMs used to refuse to be pressurised, to let other countries, no matter how mighty their global standing, meddle in our business. We didn't have a top ten economy, but we had a spine and some respect out in the world. Now we meekly let another nation broker ceasefires and decide our tariff policies without a cheep. What can I say? I miss the sagacity, the statesmanship, the reverence for country over party, the commitment to democratic values and the political acumen of my previous leaders. 

Once you've lived in a country led by towering personalities, it is awful hard to live with petty, braggadocious, incompetent politicians who don't have a shred of self respect or give a @#*& about the very people who've elected them to the position they hold.

I hope your week has gone peacefully and that you're nowhere near any situation that requires a ceasefire to be brokered. 

Duodecad

 

Well, yeah, survived the challenge for the 12th year. Which Google Chacha tells me is called a duodecad. So I'm a duodecadal survivor. I thoroughly enjoyed getting back with properly researched, immersive posts for the A-Z. I left a lot of stuff out, which I knew I'd have to, because textiles comprise a range from carpets to shawls to towels to turbans to dupattas to handkerchiefs, from little socks and underclothing to tents and sails and sheets and quilts. Even though I resolutely left all of that out and focussed on the saris only (I had to leave some saris out too, Bomkai, Arni, Ilkal, Dharmavaram, the list goes on) - it still made me feel awful - Pashmina shawls! Kashmiri carpets! Assamese Gamusas! Bandhej dupattas! - how can they be excluded?? The non-saree textiles can make an A-Z theme by themselves.

I read widely but not as deeply as I wanted, that is an unreachable target. 'Wide' this year meant less than 200 blogs, I was reminded of Alex saying that was what the challenge was like in its first year. I wasn't there for that, I joined in the 3rd of 4th year I think. Deep reading always comes at the cost of deep writing, I've learnt that from my first A-Z experiences. So that's that, c'est la vie.

Thank you to the hosts and all those who visited, read, commented and generally kept things lively and interesting. 

Will I be back next year? A cautiously optimistic yes - circumstances permitting. Hopefully, see ya next year, same time same place. 

Z is for ... Zenith

 

All this month I am writing about our amazing Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

Z is for Zari

Zari woven motif.

It is not known when exactly humans discovered gold, but this shining metal has been prized for its decorative properties from prehistorical times. The earliest known use of gold is by the Egyptians in the fourth millennium BCE, where it was used mainly for jewellery and ornamentation.

In India, the Rig Veda (1500 BCE) mentions Hiranya Vastra or cloth of gold, the Ramayana (500 BCE) mentions, among other things – Rama’s gold studded footwear (also a feature of the grave goods of some Egyptian Pharaohs and/or their consorts) and Sita's jewellery and garments. The Manusmriti (200 BCE) depicts Kuvera, the god of wealth, in golden garments and possessing untold amounts of the metal.

The World Gold Council estimates that Indian women hold around 11% of the worldwide gold reserves, mostly in the form of jewellery, about 24,000 MT. That's more gold than the reserves of USA, Germany and Switzerland combined. No Indian wedding is complete without some gift of gold and bridal gold-worked sarees. It’s utterly baffling when you compare the per capita GDP of the countries involved. Just saying.  In short, Indian culture has a very deep history of being disproportionately fascinated with gold. Given this background, it is not at all surprising that gold (and also silver) have found their way into Indian textiles also. 

 

Benarasi Tanchoi weave. 

Zari is basically gold or metallic yarn used for embellishing textiles and Zardosi is gold embroidery. Pure zari is made by wrapping silver on a core silk yarn and gilding with gold. In modern times the silver has been replaced by copper due to cost considerations.  Half fine zari uses a copper wire electroplated with silver then further gilded with gold. Tested zari is made by using a copper-silver alloy core wire which is then gilded with gold. There's imitation zari also, basically coating threads with gold coloured powders. Fast zari is made from copper with minute amounts of silver, no gold involved. Pure zari does not lose its shine. Half fine zari retains its shine longer than tested zari. Imitation and fast zari lose their shine after a few washes only. 

The word  zari and the zardosi technique both came to India from Persia, first in the 2nd millennium BCE along the ancient silk routes. The art of zari flourished and reached its zenith under Mughal rule (1526-1857), especially under Akbar the Great (1542-1605), the third emperor of the dynasty. He brought in expert artisans from Persia and set up workshops around his empire to train local textile weavers. Except for Aurangzeb, all the subsequent rulers were great patrons of arts and culture, so textile weaving generally and zari woven Benarasis particularly reached a pinnacle during the Mughal period. Varanasi or Benaras which was a textile weaving centre for millennia, became famous for its zari worked brocades from the 16th century onwards. Of course these were restricted for the use of the elites only. The original motifs were dropped in favour of more floral and foliate Persian styles - these became an identifying characteristic of these weaves. 

Kadhua weave saree with close space floral/foliate or 'jangla' motif.

We've seen other zari worked traditional sarees : the Paithani yesterday, the Kanchipuram and the Chanderi earlier in this A-Z series. Today we'll take a look at the famous Benarasi weaves. 

Valkalam - a more recent weave of Benarasi. 

Benarasi can be classified into different groups  based on 1) the fabric (pure silk, called Katan in the trade, organza, georgette, etc., blended fabrics are a recent innovation) 2) the weaving style and motifs such as Jangla, Butidar, Tanchoi, Ektara, Valkalam, Kadhua, Phekwa, Meenakari etc. Read more about the history of Benarasi sarees in this article and see how a hand woven Benarasi saree is created in the video below:

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Did you know that while Varanasi (known as Kashi in antiquity) is the centre point of Benarasi weaves, the handloom Benarasi zone includes more than a million people in Jaunpur, Gorakhpur, Chandauli, Bhadohi and Azamgarh districts? 

Thank you for reading. A special vote of thanks to those who've supported this entire series. And many congrats to all A-Zers who've survived the challenge!

A-Z Challenge 2025 

Y is for ... Yonks ... n ... Yelllow

 

All this month I am writing about amazing Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

Y is for Yarn

The spinning of yarn began long before recorded history. It is likely that the first yarns were used as humans gave up nomadism in favour of settled life and agriculture around 10,000 years ago. However, there is much uncertainty in the exact years when humans first started wearing clothes, and estimates range from 3 million years ago to 40,000 years ago. Incidentally, the oldest needles found so far have been dated to around 50,000 years ago. Just like the loom weights, the eyed needle is a crucial bit of archeological evidence of stitched stuff (and therefore yarn!) 

A study on human body lice, which are uniquely adapted to their specific environment and therefore cannot exist without the wearing of garments, dates clothing to around 170,000 years ago.  These would probably be animal skins of course, not woven fabric. But however fuzzy the timing may be, what all these findings show without a shred of doubt is that yarn - the product of twisting fibres together, has extremely ancient  roots indeed. Read more here.

The oldest archaeological evidence of weaving actually goes back to the Paleolithic (Stone Age), confirmed through a study done in the 1990s/2000. Clay imprints of woven textiles and the clothing depicted on Venus figurines were analysed and dated. Read more about this fascinating search for these 'soft technologies' employed by Paleolithic humans here  and here. 

The research shows that weaving was already happening some 28-30,000 years ago, and it was sophisticated enough that researchers felt textiles must have been woven for many years prior to get to that stage of advancement.

The actual extant evidence of woven textiles dates to around 5000 BCE - the most ancient ones found are linens from Egypt. Sericulture began in Neolithic China in the 4th millennium BCE. Textile evidence in India, at the Indus Valley Civilisation sites, also goes back to around 6000 years ago. As we've seen before early spindles predated the wheel by quite some time. 

The earliest spindles  were not much more than a piece of notched bone or a stick with a rock. The spinning wheel or 'charkha' was invented in somewhere in India and/or the Middle East between the 6th and 11th century. This then diffused along the ancient trade routes and each region modified the spinning wheel to suit the local fibres. With the Industrial Revolution, the Spinning Jenny was invented and spinning of yarns, which was a cottage scale manual activity all through the centuries, got progressively mechanised and commercialised from the 18th century onwards. 

Till about hundred years ago, all yarns were spun from natural fibres - cotton, silk, flax, jute, hemp and wool of various animals. In the last century or so, synthetic fibres were intoduced first nylon and then polyester which completely altered the textiles industry. Today there are many varieties of yarns produced across the world from natural and manmade fibres and also their blends. However, with greater consciousness about environmental impact of synthetic materials, there has been a growing demand for recyclable and biodegradable yarns. 

India is the second largest global producer of yarns, it produces cotton, cotton blends and manmade yarns in significant quantities. Recently bamboo silk and banana silk yarn have been introduced and are used for producing sarees. Jute sarees are also another new eco-friendly introduction. Read about the top yarn producers here. 

Y is for Yeola

Remember the Paithani? - the signature saree from Maharashtra.  It is one of the oldest recorded sarees - being woven in a town called Paithan dating back to the 400-300 BCE. At the time, the town was called Pratishthana and ruled by a dynasty known as the Satavahana.  Paithan is  one of the earliest silk saree weaving centres in India and sent this opulent real gold woven fabric to the Graeco-Roman world. Paithanis, like most other silk and gold luxury textiles, were reserved for the use of royalty and/or temple offerings only. These silk sarees are woven in the tapestry technique where the motifs seem to float on a dense golden background. 

With time empires rose and fell. Artisans migrated into the region and also left as capitals moved. The original Paithani weavers left Paithan and settled in Yeola sometime in the 17th century. Today the majority of the Paithani sarees are woven in Yeola on jacquard looms, though the original fully hand woven tapestry technique saree has been revived successfully in Paithan also.  Watch this video on the history of the Paithani saree below and read about the different types of Paithani sarees here. 

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Did you know that Indian textile artisans used a range of different materials to dye their yarns yellow? Turmeric, the yellow larkspur and pomegranate rinds are some plant materials which gave yellow dyes. Read more here. 

Thank you for reading. And happy last days of A-Zing to you if you are participating. 

A-Z Challenge 2025