I love poetry.
Since school days and later as I studied English literature for my graduation and post graduation I had the habit of writing down some of the poems that really appealed to me at that time.
I love Shelley, Wordsworth, W. B Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojinidevi Naidu, Amrita Pritam, Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Rilke, Arun Kolhatkar, Borkar, Shanta Shelke, Kusumagraj, Vinda Karandikar, Sudhir Moghe, DaSu Vaidya, Mangala Pataskar … the list is endless…
Wondering what to write next and browsing through some of my old books I find poems I have lovingly written down.
Most of the poems have the authors mentioned but then two pages of my own scribbling caught my attention. These are peoms written about the Dhaka Muslin Sarees!
Beautiful poems about the beautiful sarees which are poetry woven in thread.
The image of a Bengali beauty, is the one created by Rabindranath Tagore perhaps, The woman with sindoor in her hair and draped in a Dhakai saree. The expressions, emotions of these women have been immortalized by the lyrical stories and the poetry. Even today one quickly remembers all our beautiful Bengali heroines from Sharmila Tagore, Mrinal sen, Nutan to Kajol, Rani Mukherjee or Asihwarya and Priyanka Chopra, Vidya Balan playing Bengali characters in various hindi and Bengali films! Remember ‘Hawaa mein udta Iaaye, mere Lal dupatta malmal’ ka! Could this malmal’ be the Dhakai’ malmal’ ?!
My love for sweet Bengalis, Bengali sweets and Arts and Music was greatly influenced by my teacher, Mentor, Cinematographer, Rothindranath Chowdhary daaknaam’ – Pintu Chowdhary.
Also I had many Bengali friends in college. (Truly interesting characters, but will talk more about them some other time) Thanks to all of them I understand the language and can speak a bit too.
I also had a great chance to understand ‘Rabindra Sangeet’ as a part of an assignment. I would visit the old Bengali Babu, every weekend for six months and spend hours with, Mr. Anjan Das Gupta, who would narrate stories of ‘Robindranath Thakur’ sing his songs and explain what they meant. Also I would be fed ‘Macher Zhol’, ‘Doi Bhat’, and loads of Mishti !!
Those were the days when I had no access to computers and would borrow a Pentax K 1000 from Dada once in a while. I had recorded some of our discussions in a little Walkman cum recorder but after numerous change of homes and work places I have lost the precious tapes.
I do not know the author of this beautiful work. I have not written the name of the book or the poet but I am tempted to share some of those.
I will quote from my notes-
From various historical accounts, folklore and religious texts, it appears that very fine fabrics were available in Bengal as far back as the first century BCE. Once such celebrated fabric of the subcontinent is the Jamdani of Dhaka (present day Bangladesh).
The Jamdani or the Dhakai Saree is the ancient weaving techniques of Bengal, with the gossamer like “Muslin” produced here since the 14th century. The Jamdani weave therefore represents over two thousand years of continuous aesthetic evolution that blends different artistic influences.
At its best, the Muslin was so light and fine that one yard of this fabric weighed barely 10 grams and a full six yards of the fabric could pass through a ring of the index finger.
In 1840, Dr. Taylor, a British textile expert, wrote: “Even in the present day, notwithstanding the great perfection which the mills have attained, the Dhaka fabrics are unrivalled in transparency, beauty and delicacy of texture.”
The Muslin was legendary because a 5-meter long Muslin fabric could be squeezed into a match box!
‘Jam’ in Persian means flower and ‘Dani’ means vase, thus the motifs used in Jamdani weaving are mostly flowers and creepers ‘Asawali’. The mango motif is widely used as symbol of fertility, growth and marital bliss. The Lotus, ‘Pradeep’ or Lamp, ‘Mor’ peacock and ‘Tota Maina’ are woven painstakingly on the cotton cloth with fine texture.
Dhakai saris are woven in soft and bright hues – beiges, blues, reds, off whites with borders of creepers, birds and intricately designed pallus.
Small ‘boottis’ (circular or oval motifs) in different colours add zest to light backgrounds.
Fine muslin with weaves of grass green, sky blue, lemon yellow, hot pink or midnight blue running through the borders and pallus.
Delicately spun cotton (the kind of saris that fit into matchboxes) with flowers blooming all over.
Elegant black saris with thin gold thread – stars and moonbeams illuminating a night sky… Nature in all its loveliness woven into cloth – what more could one ask for?
Now there are two things on my mind, to find out who has written this beautiful poetry about the soft ‘malmal’ threads and to drape myself in one of these woven dreams!
Saree detail photos- Sourced from the Internet.. Text added by Swapna Pataskar
Poet- Unknown
The way I see it 