OODENA, KASHMIR, INDIA – During the chilly winter season, Tahira Bano, 25, works on a carpet loom along with her younger sister, Batool Akther, 22, and father, Ghulam Ahmad Bhat, in a modest room in Oodena, a village in northwestern Jammu and Kashmir state. The trio of carpet weavers sits on a long, wooden seat laid over a few empty sacks as they work on a 6-by-9 carpet.
“We’ve been working on this carpet for last one month,” Bano says in Kashmiri. “It will take few months more to complete it.”
Bano’s face is pale, and her eyes look sunken and depressed.
“We want to escape carpet weaving, but how is a question,” Bano says.
Bano has been engaged in carpet weaving since her childhood. She says she never went to school because her parents couldn’t afford it. Instead, she had to start weaving in order help her family earn money.
“I have been doing it over past 14 years now,” she says. “I yearned to go to school, but due to poverty and financial constraints at home, couldn’t fulfill my dream. There were no financial resources for us to study.”
Her parents say they regret not being able to afford to send their daughters to school.
“It is too late now,” says Raja Begum, Bano’s mother.
Bano looks anxious as she takes a rare break from her work.
“This is our source of income,” she says. “We’ve no other option.”
As her father reads out the “talim,” the instructional script for how to weave a carpet, Bano and her sister are quick to respond. They cut threads with a “khoor” – a sharp blade – frame knots and weave the carpet. In between, Bhat puffs hookah to relax.
Usually, their day starts early in the morning and stretches into the late evening.
“We start work at 7 in morning, leave in between for brief intervals for lunch and tea and wrap up by evening,” Bano says. “We’ve a weekly off on Fridays and festivals.”
Bano says they would like to quit this job but that alternatives are daunting. She says that changing professions would require them to learn an entire new skill set and industry, which would be hectic and time-consuming.
“We’ve no option,” she says. “We wish to go out but have to complete work.”
Her father, too, has been engaged with carpet weaving since his childhood. He says that he used to go to his master’s workshop to weave carpets for more than 15 years.
“My master was tough,” he says. “He often used to beat me, and a thought of committing suicide often captured my mind. One day, I even jumped into [a] river to end my life but was saved.”
He says that he had to work in order to support himself and his four siblings.
“We were poor and had nothing to eat or wear,” he says. “I used to earn 25 paise [half a cent] per day.”
Begum says her husband eventually got his own loom.
“It was after marriage that we set up a loom at our home,” she says. “Prior to this, he worked at his master’s place.”
Bhat says he has taught the art of carpet weaving to many people in the area.
“I have trained people both about script and weaving pattern from adjoining areas, including Pattan, Sheerpora and Buren,” he says.
Bano and her two sisters learned carpet weaving from their father, although their mother never learned. The eldest sister quit weaving after she got married three years ago.
Print
