Suchi Vastra: The Language of Stitches
From the bone needles of Mohenjo-daro to a Rabari woman threading a torana in Kutch, the four-thousand-year story of Indian embroidery.
In a low-roofed mud house in the village of Bhadroi in Kutch, a Rabari woman named Pabiben Rabari sits with a white cotton cloth in her lap, a brass needle in her right hand, and a skein of red silk thread in her left. The cloth will become a torana, a doorway hanging, for her cousin's wedding next month. She has been stitching since she was seven. Her mother taught her. Her mother's mother taught her mother. Her torana carries twelve different stitches and three mirror sizes, and every motif on it means something her family has known for at least four hundred years. This lesson walks the four-thousand-year heritage of Indian embroidery, from the bone and copper needles dug up at Mohenjo-daro, through the Mughal karkhanas of Lahore and Agra, through the Chamba court's miniature-painter embroideries, through the Partition refugee trunks carrying Phulkari shawls across the border, and into the 21st century revival led by Shrujan, Kala Raksha, Chanakya School of Craft, and the 20,000 Chikankari women of Lucknow.
The Needle Catches Light
In the village of Bhadroi in the Anjar district of Kutch, Gujarat, in a low-roofed mud house with a single open window, a Rabari woman named Pabiben Rabari sits cross-legged on the floor. In her lap is a length of white cotton cloth. In her right hand is a thin brass needle, about the size of a matchstick. In her left is a skein of fine red silk thread. It is early morning. The window light falls across the cloth at a low angle, and the needle catches it each time she draws the thread up.
The cloth will become a torana, a doorway hanging, for her cousin's wedding next month. A Rabari torana is embroidered with peacocks, elephants, parrots, small dancing figures, and a border of red triangles called kangra. Each figure is made by layering twelve different stitches on top of each other, anchored with small round mirrors the size of a fingernail. Pabiben has been stitching since she was seven years old. Her mother taught her. Her mother's mother taught her mother. Every motif on this torana means something her community has known for at least four hundred years. The peacock is for beauty. The elephant is for strength. The parrot is for the bride's new husband. The red triangles at the border are to keep the evil eye away from the bridal threshold.
When the torana is finished, it will be stitched to a wooden frame and hung above the door of the wedding house. The bride will walk under it on the morning of her wedding, and the embroidery Pabiben is making this week will frame the first step the bride takes into her married life. The whole thing is still being made exactly the way a Rabari woman would have made it in the year 1625.