The Green Dhakai Jamdaani

         

 I was recently gifted a dhakai jamdaani sari. If you are a Bong reading this and especially a Bong woman, you would probably know how exquisite these saris are: each piece a work of art, each piece as precious as any family heirloom. And if you are not (a Bong, that is), let me tell you a little about these saris.

          The jamdaani saris are of pure cotton, made from that very famous fine muslin of Bengal. It is hand woven on a wooden loom by a weaver, an artisan who would have mostly learnt the skill from his father who in turn would have learnt it from his. This weaving of jamdaanis thus is a family business, though not a very lucrative one. Most weaver families are quite poor, and caught between nefarious middlemen and blood sucking moneylenders, they barely manage to eke out a living by their craft.But looking at the jamdaani, you could never tell it was created by a malnourished, impoverished weaver in dark dingy room somewhere in the heart of Bangladesh. The jamdaani saris are creatures of Light and Magic, like fleet-footed fairies floating on bright gossamer wings....!

          Though West Bengal and Bangladesh both produce jamdaanis, the ones from India can never quite match up to the jamdaanis from Bangladesh. And just as Darjeeling tea is not Darjeeling Tea unless it has been grown in Darjeeling, Dhakai jamdaani is not Dhakai Jamdaani unless it was woven in Dhaka! Like any Bong blooded woman, I have always coveted an authentic Dhakai jamdaani and now, thanks to Other Half gallivanting across continents, am the proud owner of one!

          Let me tell you about my sari. It is green with a lattice of cream coloured flowers and tiny dots or bootis woven throughout its body. The fabric is soft to touch and in spite of being cotton, shimmers and ripples a just a little like silk. And that green colour is exquisite and truth be told, difficult to describe. But such a beautiful colour deserves a description and if you ask me, not just any ‘description’. An ode would be perfect but since the Lake poets are long dead, that would be asking too much. So now its left to me to attempt one!

          Have you ever stood under a tree on a spring afternoon, with sunlight filtering in through the fresh new leaves and bouncing off the new spring grass?  If you have, you may have noticed how the play of sunlight and chlorophyll creates a very special green aura there beneath that tree. The colour of my sari is this exact shade of green.
          I must confess that in spite of all this gushing, I haven’t worn the sari yet. And that is purely because you need an ‘occasion’ to wear it and not just any occasion will befit it. An autumn evening dinner by the Ganga with Nazrul or Tagore playing in the background and the scent of jasmine heavy in the air would be perfect. But since anything similar is not likely to happen anytime soon in this dull as ditchwater, romance deficient city that I presently live in, the green dhakai hangs in my wardrobe, silently waiting. 

          A school friend had sent me a link to a Huffington Post article on Arundhati Roy and while scrolling through it, my eyes fell on a headline on the page: Gunmen storm Dhaka restaurant, 18 killed’. Like many others, I have become very weary of these incidents of needless violence that seem to be taking place almost daily, with unfailing regularity. Recently, there was that young British MP, then Turkey and Kabul and of course in Syria and in Iraq where it is happening every day....! An escapist since birth, I simply evaded the article and continued with the infinitelymore comfortable Roy with her swinging grey curls and headline grabbing quotes. It was later, probably that evening or the afternoon next, that I chanced upon an interview given by Tarishi Jain’s uncle to NDTV, Tarishi Jain being that Indian girl who was one of those eighteen killed in that Dhaka attack. Initially it appeared to me that the gentleman was speaking rather unemotionally, but as the interview progressed, I noticed how he became silent once or twice, turning his head hopelessly to one side and I could almost see the pain rise up his throat and render him speechless. I realised how wrong I had been. I felt my heart go out to that very ordinary man, a grieving uncle who had lost a loved niece, as he tried so hard to remain stoic for the camera. I don’t know what it was but for an instant I felt his pain very personally, very physically.

          And so I followed the tragic story carefully and learnt how this nineteen year old while on a short trip to Dhaka was dining at that cafe and had been brutally massacred. I saw the photos of her at her University in Berkeley, holidaying with her parents, with her brother, photos of herself that she had posted on Facebook, a pretty smiling teenager, who at nineteen was actually on the threshold of adulthood, her whole life stretching out before her, yet to be lived......! I also saw the pictures of the father with his broken tearless face, clutching his grieving wife to his chest, of the mother fainting at the funeral, the young friends at Berkeley breaking down as they read tributes to her from their cell phones. No, of course I can never fully grasp the magnitude of pain that they were going through, never really know the limit of their incredible sadness but watching the uncle’s interview and seeing the photograph of the father at the funeral, for a few fleeting moments I thought I had felt fully their sense of loss. And I must confess, the feeling was sickening and it was not just sorrow. It was anger and hopelessness and a feeling of sheer desolation and I can only hope and pray that no one has to feel it, ever.

          Now there is this young twenty something junior doctor recently emerged from Med School who has joined work with me and whom perforce I have had to adopt. And so, since the last few weeks I have had her tailing me constantly, like an over-eager devoted puppy. As I watched her prancing along, chattering non-stop, constantly fiddling around with her cell phone’s WhatsApp and Facebook and what not, clicking selfies, I thought how very much like her the now dead Tarishi Jain would have been and the sheer sheer futility of her death.

          I had other thoughts too, thoughts that asked what kind of insane country was it where visitors were slaughtered with such ease just because they followed a different God? The whole country and its people are crazy, went my thoughts, not just crazy but raving lunatic fundamentalists....! Our country should put an embargo on them, those things they called sanctions like the ones America has been placing on Iran...! Stop all contact, ranted my thoughts, stop all trade, seal the borders, deny that they even exist, nuke them.....!

          And as I crossed from my bedroom to the kitchen, my eyes fell on my wardrobe, one panel of its door ajar. The green dhakai hung there, bright and green and waiting. I stomped across, pulled it out of its hanger , bundled it cruelly into a tiny plastic bag too small for it and threw it onto the topmost shelf of my wardrobe, right to the very rear, there where I usually kept those clothes I had planned on discarding.

          I continued through my evening, preparing dinner, feeding the dogs, attempting to watch Al Jazeera and Star World and Romedy Now simultaneously as I ate my dinner, checking WhatsApp, taking the dogs for an evening stroll; and as I went through those familiar motions, they calmed me somehow and I felt reason return slowly, like a penitent puppy. I realised how totally insane and childish it had been of me to take out my anger and sorrow on that inanimate green dhakai. I still feel immensely silly about it even as I write this. And my thoughts also went back to how the green dhakai had come to be in my possession.

          Other Half had acquired a young Bangladeshi friend, a fellow doctor from Dhaka and when I came to know this, I had urged, Ask him to get me a Dhakai jamdaani. The same was duly conveyed to this young man and after a few deliberations on email as to my colour choices, I was handed over this beauty. Totally enamoured of the sari I asked Other Half to convey my thanks and appreciation to his Bangladeshi friend. And for me the matter ended there. It was only later when I asked Other Half as to how expensive the sari had been, he told me sheepishly that his friend had refused to accept money for the sari. When Other Half had attempted to coax and coerce him, his friend had simply said, Its a gift for Vhabi. I cannot accept money for that.

          Though initially not too happy with the situation, I gave up when Other Half told me that it had been totally impossible for him to induce that young man to take money. And now, since it was a gift, the green Dhakai acquired a new sheen, rendering it even prettier.

          Since Other Half and me are at present on different continents separated by rather vast oceans, our exchanges are mainly on the world wide web, through emails rarely and instant messaging mostly. So when I saw how he had spelt ‘Bhabi’ as ‘Vhabi’, I asked him about it. He told me that his Bangladeshi friend spelt the word thus, with a V and not a B. I found it amusing and come to think of it rather cute too and it stuck to my mind. I remembered too of speaking to that young man. He had sounded like a polite and in fact rather nice young man, his Bengali a little different from ours but appealing nevertheless. He had gone into a litany of praise for Other Half , saying, Sir is a very good doctor etc, etc, etc which had cheesed me off no end ( confession: I actually had felt rather proud).......!

          And thus today as I recalled this story of how I had acquired the green dhakai, I felt my anger slowly ease, to be replaced by reason.

          And then over the next few days I saw and read stories of how a Bangladeshi boy had refused to desert his foreign friends and so had died in the carnage, saw the outpourings of grief and regret from Bangladeshi citizens, heard the broken father of one of the now dead attackers say tearfully that he had no words with which to beg forgiveness from Tarishi’s parents for what his son had done...I realised one can never blame a whole People for the crimes of a handful. And also that the only way to cure this disease is to reach out. Reach out , across nations, across religions, across the barriers of skin colour, faith, creed, language, social status and all those millions of other walls that we have come to erect between Peoples over the course of our evolution....! Reach out and connect; connect and find common ground, that is probably the only way!

          And so another thought came flooding my mind: What if the Akash, Badhon, Bikash, Don and Ripon had had a Vhabi in that country just next to theirs, a Vhabi who worshipped stone-clay-wooden idols, marked her forehead with large coloured dots, a Vhabi who nevertheless was rather partial to Dhakai Jamdaani saris, a Vhabi whom they had gifted a shimmering green Dhakai Jamdaani that she loved and valued? Was it too simplistic for me to believe that perhaps then their fingers would have shaken a little, their hands hesitated and then stalled completely at the triggers of their automatic weapons...........?

Maybe yes, for who knows and who can tell. 

Maybe........!