Suraiya Hasan Bose sits opposite me looking cool and comfortable in spite of the searing hot Hyderabad morning. The nonagenarian textile revivalist is hard of hearing and I have to speak loudly. Her eyes sparkle behind her glasses and she smiles gently as she patiently answers my questions. We are in her modest weaving studio and store, which sits in the same compound as the Safrani Memorial School, in the busy area of Rai Durg. This is where she has single-handedly revived himroo (a Persian brocade weave) and mashru (a silk and cotton weave), and where she has been working with paithani, ikat and kalamkari.
“This land was bought by my uncle Abid Safrani in the 70s,” says Suraiya. Abid Hasan Safrani was a freedom fighter, diplomat and one-time personal secretary to Subhash Chandra Bose. “There was nothing here in those days, it was wild,” she says. At that time, Suraiya was living in Delhi with her husband Aurobindo (Subhash Chandra Bose’s nephew) and working in textiles. There she was introduced to Pupul Jayakar, a pioneer in craft and textile revival in India. “She became my mentor and I learned a lot about handloom and fabrics.” When Suraiya lost her husband, her uncle suggested she come back to Hyderabad.
So, in the early 80s, Suraiya Apa, as she is fondly called, set up a small studio on the land provided by her uncle to revive himroo, a weave that was popular in her childhood but was starting to disappear due to a lack of skilled weavers. “We basically cleaned out a chicken coop and built a small room in its place where we kept one loom,” says her cousin and business partner Dominic Hasan. Along with Syed Umer, a master weaver who had worked with her earlier, Suraiya set out to bring back disappearing traditional weaving techniques. But first, they needed patterns to work from, and there was no real documentation when it came to himroo.
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So Suraiya went to old families in the city and collected precious bits of antique cloth and garments that featured the weave. “Many pieces were torn and damaged, stored away in some corner of the house and forgotten about,” she says.
Dominic lays out a part of a sherwani that is said to have belonged to Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh. The work is fine and the colours of the floral design still bright more than a century later. There are scores of such sample pieces catalogued and preserved by the two. Some are small pieces of fabric, others are full garments like a little boy’s vivid yellow sherwani, slightly tattered with age but with the fine workmanship still visible. “This belonged to our grandmother,” says Dominic, holding up a pair of himroo pyjamas patterned in black, red and gold. “She was from Iran and wore pyjamas like this every day.” From these samples, Suraiya and her team set out to recreate the weaves.
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It was a tedious process as they lacked the graph or jaala needed to set the loom. So, Suraiya and Umer had to unravel parts of the samples, pull the threads to study the weave, and then recreate the blueprint. Together, they created several jaalas . “It takes two months to lay the loom,” says Suraiya, “and with two people working at each loom (a helper and a weaver), only around three inches of fabric can be weaved in a day.”
As Dominic and Suraiya show me around the shed where the looms are, the sound of chattering school children pours into the room. But that doesn’t break the concentration of the six women working under the guidance of Umer. The work is backbreaking, intense, and needs complete focus. “Over the years, we have trained around 30 women in the neighbourhood,” says Dominic. “But most have left for more profitable jobs or to raise families.”
Custom orders
The himroo, mashru and paithani are only weaved on order these days. The customers are usually people who know the value of the textile or want the fabric for a wedding outfit. But the store also sells ikat and kalamkari fabrics, saris and durries — all woven by communities in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Suraiya and Dominic work closely with around 300 weaving families, collaborating on design and ensuring quality. Suraiya once exported many of the fabrics and even supplied to Fabindia, whose founder John Bissel was a close friend and mentor.
These days, she does not travel to the weaving villages. “I open the store in the morning,” says Suraiya, “and I am here till it closes at 5 p.m.” You still find her checking inventory, inspecting fabrics, and greeting visitors with a warm smile. In the course of the day, she also visits the school and walks over to the weaving studio to see how the women are faring. Suraiya walks slowly but surely, as we head back to the store from the studio. On the way, she stops to tell the gardener to check on a particular fruit tree. “I love gardening,” she says. “On Sundays when the store is closed, I spend my time gardening or visiting family.”
Dominic, who has been with her on this journey from the beginning, manages most of the work now. “There’s no money to be made from this anymore,” he says. But they carry on, to preserve the art and the technique so that people can learn more about it. “We worked hard to set it all up,” says Suraiya. “ I wanted to build something that would be there forever.”
Suraiya’s life and legacy, and her pioneering work, are the subject of a new book, Suraiya Hasan Bose: Weaving a Legacy , by Delhi-based writer-photo editor Radhika Singh. Incubated over six years, the book is an attempt at rekindling interest in India’s forgotten weaves and tells the story of a remarkable woman who has spent her life keeping these traditions alive.
The writer obsesses about books, her child, social media and cake, not necessarily in that order.