His eyes are bloodshot. Weaver A Shanmugasundaram is tired. He worked 96 hours straight last week to create his masterpiece: a tomato-red silk shawl with the face of Chinese President Xi Jinping woven in gold zari in the centre.
“It will take at least another two days for my eyes to return to their normal colour,” he smiles. Seated inside the Electronic Jacquard Loom room at the office of the Sirumugaipudur Sri Ramalinga Sowdambigai Weavers’ Cooperative Society in Sirumugai, a panchayat in Coimbatore district, he points to the four pedals below the loom. “I pressed one of them 24,100 times during the making of the shawl,” he says.
COIMBATORE, TAMIL NADU, 15/10/2019: (for MetroPlus): The shawl that Prime minister Narendra Modi gifted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the recent informal summit in Mamallapuram Coimbatore District. Photo:S. Siva Saravanan/ The Hindu
Prime Minister Narendra Modi gifted the shawl to Xi during their recently-concluded informal summit at Mamallapuram. “Did you see how Modi held it out for the President to appreciate it?” asks Shanmugasundaram. “They showed it on television.” The 41-year-old has been weaving since he was 17 years old. “I must have woven thousands of saris over these years,” he says. But none of them have achieved the celebrity status of the red shawl. “I wove it with another weaver E Manoj Kumar who works at the Society,” he adds.
Shanmugasundaram has got news that the shawl has reached China. “So many people across the world saw it,” he grins. “I cannot even begin to describe my happiness.” The men were racing against time to weave the shawl: “We initially wove a blue one, but the Government authorities wanted red, since the colour is present in the Chinese national flag,” he says. This sent the team into a tizzy. Besides, they wanted a different photo of Xi to be rendered. This meant the men had to start from scratch, again.
COIMBATORE, TAMIL NADU, 15/10/2019: (for MetroPlus): A, Shanmugasundaram of the Sri Ramalinga Sowdambigai Weavers’ Cooperative Society, who wove the shawl that Prime minister Narendra Modi gifted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the recent informal summit in Mamallapuram Coimbatore District. Photo:S. Siva Saravanan/ The Hindu
But M Dharmaraj, the designer, the man behind it all, was unperturbed. “I was sure we could deliver it,” he says. With less than 10 days at their disposal, he spent five days on designing the shawl. Depicting a human face on a silk sari has more to do with Math than aesthetics. “It’s a complex system based on numbers and counts,” Dharmaraj tells us.
The 56-year-old has been behind path-breaking initiatives, such as the Mayilthogai sari that has over 1,64,492 colours in the form of tiny checks; and another that carried all the 1,330 Thirukkural couplets. “I have always been game for something challenging,” says Dharmaraj. Which is why he decided to try weaving faces on silk saris. “But for prices to not sky-rocket, I needed an electronic jacquard installed in a hand loom,” he says. After a lot of research, Dharmaraj got it set up at the Society in 2008. “This kind of loom is unique to our region,” he says. The loom is perhaps why his Society got the order for the shawl.
Weaving hub
Sirumugai is a quiet town of around 5,000 families. Most households here own two looms each. “We were chiefly weaving cotton until the 1980s,” says Dharmaraj. Gradually, silk made an appearance, and right now, there are 14 cooperative societies in the town, each of which work with their own set of weavers. What sets apart the Sirumugai silk sari is its texture. “Ours is what you call soft silk,” says Dharmaraj.
Thanks to the red shawl, the town is in the spotlight now. “My phone hasn’t stopped ringing for the past three days,” says Dharmaraj, wincing. “My mouth is hurting from talking non-stop; but I’m grateful for all the appreciation.” He is waiting for the attention to settle so that he can go back to his computer and enter his quiet zone.
Dharmaraj trained the two weavers and kept checking on them to ensure all was going as per plan. “Even a small error could have cost us the entire shawl,” he says, adding, “We had time just for that one piece.” However, they made a similar one at leisure soon after.
Shanmugasundaram remembers working without sleep or food. “We had just two idli s for dinner then. Apart from that, we worked on an empty stomach since food makes one sleepy,” he says.
The weavers took turns to sleep beside the loom. “We slept for two hours when we felt tired, and got right back,” explains Shanmugasundaram. His wife Porselvi pitched in too, by spinning the silk thread on small spindles at home. Even when he slept, the clackety-clack of the loom echoed in his ears. “It was all I heard during those four days,” he adds.
Inside a bureau at the society, is the second red shawl the weavers made. Shanmugasundaram spreads it out on a table: it looks even more beautiful up close. “Does it look good?” he asks, looking at it like he would his child.
