I wanted to take my new Venue car for a long drive. But long story short, we went for just about an hour plus drive from my home, to Pochampally. Incidentally, this is listed as one of the best tourism villages under the United Nations World Tourism Organization. It is also called the Silk city of India or something like that. It was shocking to realize that such a wonderful place existed just about next door to my home. Luckily I stopped at a shop right around 10 am when the market was just opening up, at Pochampalli. I realized later in the day, that that was the best thing I did to begin with in my visit. The shops I visited later had much worse collection of handlooms compared to this one.
Starting in the village that is consisting of perhaps one main road of around 1.5 km and then dividing into a Y junction of 1 km each on either side. The village did not have much of anything beyond handloom shops after handloom shops, and then a few more smaller handloom shops, and further down a cooperative shop of again handloom material. No wonder it's a UNWTO listed place. Nothing beyond handloom industry and therefore surely interesting. The only other thing that one would see were few large banks, which to my eyes seemed like an anomaly given the size of the village. But that should also give an idea of the amount of commerce that must be happening for the size of this village.
For the volume of sarees they sell, mostly silk of Rs 9000 each, although they do have cotton or cotton-mix silk sarees or other material, one should expect the villagers to be very affluent, given the size of these banks. But to my eyes, that was not the case. The village seemed like a fairly democratized one. Most houses seemed nearly equally rich or more appropriately, equally poor. Perhaps most of the village is about middle or lower middle class with very few, if any, particularly rich or very poor.
It was a clean and well-maintained village that gives positive vibes. Many houses have shops/outlets either in same building or within close proximity. They make the material themselves at their homes. A real cottage industry in action. The material produced seemed like 60% were sarees and rest being spread across women dress material, men's shirt material, and bedsheets.
As one would expect, we found that nearly all shops stocked about the same handloom designs and material type, and quality. Prices also did not seem to vary a lot. I did not find greedy shopkeepers trying to cheat customers with little knowlsdge with abnormally high prices.
I acquired some knowledge to spot differences in quality of fabric, loom types that exist, types of fabric, and also what it meant from an economic and cultural standpoint to the village. To my eyes, this village represented how people should be living for a fairly comfortable life. It was utterly shocking that the village did not have any restaurant or shopping center worth mention even for things as tea, snacks or lunch that we have come to take for granted in most places. I always assumed that if there was human civilization, there one would surely find eateries. But not this village. Initially i thought we missed to locate them. I even inquired locally. As it would typically happen in india, rather than say they did not know each person inquired directs me to a place that doesn't exist. That is until one meat shopper said they wouldn't have any at least at that lunch hour time. The only options were couple of bakeries and fruit vendors and one shop selling tea only, as we deparately tried to have some lunch.
I think I saw only one proper decent hospital. There was only one Bar and perhaps one alcohol vendor. I mean does it look like a coincidence that there are minimum bakeries/eateries, no road side vendors or carts with fried snacks, and that there are minimum medical stores and one decent hospital? I don't think I saw even one Apollo or Medplus medical store which is a rarity for any location these days. Seriously, something good is underneath this place!
And i suddenly noticed that after we told a shop keeper that we had already purchased some clothes, he did not ask us where we had purchased and at what price. Normally people would tell us that we were cheated with a lower quality or higher price at the other shop. Here they were not keen on business of others. Simple people perhaps.
The shop I visited first to inquire about where we could see handloom sarees in the making, a person from the shop volunteerd to take us to his home and show the details. And I am not negating the idea of there being a motive behind taking us and showing the purpose. Of course we were going to do some purchase at this shop after the home tour!
He piloted our car on his motorcycle to his modestly built home on a very well-maintained section of a narrow cement road. The head of the home came to us and explained the whole process of making a saree and patiently answered our questions. He even operated his handloom equipment for a while to clearly explain how the designs were made, how the dyes were applied, how long it took for each process, and so on. The wife and husband brought several of their personal clothing and explained the nuances in qualities. Although I would have loved to see for myself physically the whole process from cotton to ball and then from the dyeing and design making, the explanation by the owner and observing his handloom equipment in operation, laid a solid foundation for my rest of the day. I was quite thankful for the hospitality.
Pricing of sarees is far more complicated than I had perceived prior to this visit. For a design to happen on the loom, the thread is spread on the top of a graph paper very precisely. There are rubber patches applied on the threads to stop the section from getting dyed per design. A bunch of silk thread is then tied together, and dyed. There is spindle that is manually operated between threads on the loom to make a design. Finer adjustments are manually made during weaving, despite the tie and dye method to ensure precise design in the cloth. It is truly a remarkable way and very complicated to develop intricate design on the final output.
They normally use Malabar silk thread in their sarees. Apparently there are over 6 varieties of silk including one that is a made in a non violent method from tree sap which silk turns out quite expensive. But it exists for those pure heart people should one desire to not extract silk from skill worms.
that ends up being shorter in length than the silk thread. For SICO {silk + cotton} material, they use cotton thread for strength on vertical threads while the horizontal ones are of silk. The patterns on some fabrics are polished manually after the fabric is weaved taking several hours or even days. This gives the fabric a unique luxurious appearance.
The price of a saree varies by a two-fold or even higher for the same fabric based on complexity in design and/or polishing. It is truly a very heavily manual process of weaving most type of sarees. Before I stepped and saw all of that, I quite didn't get it just because there is a different design why would the cost go up multifold, me coming from a printing set of mind.
The big question is, does it make sense to make sarees this way when all of this could be easily accomplished by a powerloom? They have a distinct appearance to the handloom due to unusual thread grouping and imperfections. But these could also be replicated through random variations programmed in a powerloom. Am I looking at an inefficient way of making things, or missing with wisdom of people happy at doing things they are and people happy buying things that are hand made?
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