Noorpu
C. Sivagurunathan has spent all his life listening to the sound of the loom. “My parents would take turns and weave on a handloom that occupied much of our one-room house in Erode. It was our source of livelihood and we considered it the sole fortune of our family,” recalls Sivagurunathan, who is now a corporate employee in Chennai. “But unfortunately the handloom lost its lustre midway and many weavers migrated to other jobs. Though I am from a family of weavers, I don’t know much about the art.” Inspired by Gandhian thoughts, Sivagurunathan has now taken up the task of reviving community weaving. “Weaving was an occupation done as a cluster or society. People living in the street or area contributed to the entire process and the income was shared by all,” he points out. “Erode which was once a hub for handlooms has now been taken over by textile giants in neighbouring Tirupur.”
A visit to Melukote near Mysore to understand community weaving inspired Sivagurunathan to start Noorpu, an initiative to revive the concept. “Melukote nurtures small weaving clusters supported by Janapada Seva Trust. That’s where I got the idea of doing something similar in Erode. As part of Noorpu’s first project, we are in the process of sourcing native cotton yarn. Even the organically grown cotton these days is not really the native ‘nattu paruthi’ cotton. As the native yarn is coarse and lacks the tensile strength and finesse, weavers have moved on to the genetically modified fibre,” says Sivagurunathan. “I take Gandhiji’s Charkha as my inspiration and want to set up a weaving centre in Erode for small-scale weavers. Right now, I have reintroduced weaving into a couple of households that abandoned the job. To convince them to return to weaving was difficult. I plan to make saris and dhotis out of the native cotton yarn before moving on to bed sheets or other items.”
Ambaram
Six months ago, S.P.Ponmani found a calling in her love for kids and she combined it with her dress-making skills. Thus was born the idea of Ambaram, a home-bred initiative of making baby clothes using organic cotton and naturally dyed fabrics. Ever since, Ponmani has confined herself to the lone sewing machine in her Jaihindpuram house churning out simple cute little clothes for babies less than a year old. “I did a crash course in Fashion Designing and went on to work in a textile house in Chennai. But I realised how clothing is highly commercialised and the fashion industry generates huge amount of waste in terms of fabrics and dyes,” she says. “The clothing and accessories market for babies and kids is the biggest and highly resource-intensive. I wanted to do something that’s earthy, simple and less on usage of fabrics and dyes. The concept is more like going back to basics.”
Ponmani is happy that her brother Arun Kumar has also joined her in the cause. “Now, we work on two sewing machines and since it’s just a basic pattern for babies, we end up stitching good number of pairs in a day. We make a kameez and a pair of shorts with an apron as a set and sell it in Jaihindpuram and surroundings for Rs.200 to Rs.300. Sometimes, we give a marapachi doll as a compliment,” says Ponmani, who sources organic cotton fabrics from Batlagundu. “A number of organic farmers are growing cotton in black soil region surrounding Batlagundu. We also source naturally dyed cotton fabrics from Tiruvannamalai. This is only the first step and we hope it grows into a larger movement.”
