Three days after Deepavali when I visited Paithan, I wasn’t sure I would see weavers at work, considering that it is a five-day holiday across north India. But it was worth the effort.
Sitting on the banks of the Godavari, about 60 km from Aurangabad, Paithan can be reached either by a shared taxi or a state transport bus. Either way, it’s a rickety ride down dusty Panchayat roads. The view made up for the ride — vast swathes of green fields of two-feet-high sugarcane and cotton plants that had just started flowering were rewarding sights.
At the end of the 90-minute bone-jolting ride, we reached Paithan bus station, from where we hired an autorickshaw to the Marhati Emporium, a one-hall showroom with a collection of cloth bags, scarves and bedspreads on display.
Paithani traces its history to the reign of the emperor Shalivahana. Paithan, then known as Pratishthana, was an international trade centre for silk and art, says the booklet published by Marhati, a unit of the Maharashtra Small Scale Industries Development Corporation (MSSIDC). Originally, a Paithani sari was nine yards of pure silk and spun gold, and called Navvari Pathani. The silk came from China and the gold from India.
The Peshwas patronised the fabric, but with their fall, Paithani faded away. During Mughal and British rule many weavers migrated and either set up units or left the business.
A sample sari at the Marhati Emporium.
Rebuilding a craft
“In 1976, the State government transferred the design-cum-demo centre to the MSSIDC. At that time there were only four weavers. We got a grant of ₹1 lakh from the Norwegian government. We bought a few looms and announced a training programme. One of the experts came forward and we trained five, six people,” said Alka S. Manjrekar, divisional manager of the Aurangabad, Nanded, Latur MSSIDC.
Silk yarn was procured from Silk Board Karnataka and in 1987 an exhibition was held with just a dozen saris in Mumbai. It ended with an order for around 300 saris, and helped to build a fund. Since then, over 2,000 weavers have been trained. The success encouraged the government to allocate funds annually to revive the art. And Marhati, a centre to revive Paithani, was set up. Its emblem is the nath (nose ring) worn by Marathi women.
“The pre-weaving process has not changed till date. The saris are woven by hand and not jacquard machines, making it a painstaking process,” said Manjrekar. The weavers fashion paper rolls for thread reams for the motifs, all of them replicas of Ajanta paintings, including munias, parrots, simple flowers, lotuses and, most intricate of all, peacocks. Those who know the value of the fabric hand the saris down as heirlooms, she said.
Weavers at work at Marhati.
At the emporium in Paithan, behind the showroom in a cavernous hall, 100 looms stand testimony to the effort. Around 10 women, young and old, were busy at work. An elderly woman explained the nuances to a youngster, helping her roll the yarn. Women wove the coloured threads for motifs following the outline of the designs on trace sheets. The trainees are paid a monthly stipend of ₹1,700 and taught to work with cotton first. Of the 1,200 persons trained, 65 work at the centre and 300 are working in the town, where each house has a loom.
Thirty-five-year-old Alka is a trainer with 17 years of experience. She lives in the town with two school-going children. “I have made 12 to 15 saris so far. When I visited the centre, I knew I wanted to become a weaver,” she said. Another weaver, Renuka, who says she is around 40, was also trained at the centre and has been weaving saris for the past 15 years. Both women are the only ones in their families to learn the art. Women have been employed on all 100 looms. “They are from modest families and the wages help them,” said A.K. Rakshe, who is in charge of the showroom.
Luxurious product
A sari uses 800 gm of silk and 160 gm–400 gm of gold-coated silver zari, and may take anything from a month to two years to weave, depending on the design. Weavers are paid a third of the sari’s cost. “99% of the weavers we have trained are women,” he added. The price ranges from ₹25,000 to ₹3 lakh.
Among Marhati’s patrons are playback singer Lata Mangeshkar and former President Pratibha Patil, as well as a range of film celebrities. Their silk saris have adorned the deities of Tirupati, Vittala Panduranga, Kolhapur Mahalakshmi and Shirdi Sai Baba. They have centres only in Paithan, Aurangabad, Bombay and Delhi, but have customers the world over.
One of the looms
Marhati continues to make only a few hundred saris a year, which are in great demand. Weavers from Kancheepuram and Varanasi visited the centre to learn the art and introduce technology, but were left in awe of the intricacies in weaving, said Manjrekar. With the price of gold and silver rising there is concern that it may become difficult to continue to offer original Paithani saris.
By the time I boarded another rickety bus back to Aurangabad, it was sunset. A co-passenger took a look at the booklet I held and said “Paithani?” I nodded. “Very expensive. But you get what you pay for,” she said.
