How Kaithun women weave together Kota Doria saree’s delicate legacy on their looms

Kahat Kabir kaargah tori

Sootahi soot milaaye kori

(The weaver joins together raw threads on the warp and weft of her loom to gift us the fabric we call life).

So said 15th century weaver-poet Kabir.

The warp and weft are indeed the base of all textile, but few things represent them as delicately as a Kota Doria saree. The chequered pattern on a light semi-sheer fabric has a legacy that spans generations, kept safe in the hands of the young women of Kaithun, a small town in Rajasthan’s Kota district, that has the distinction of getting a geographical indication for the Doria saree, the first GI to be marked in India’s largest state.

A popular story of the fabric’s origin goes back to the late 17th century when Rao Kishore Singh, a general in the Mughal army, brought weavers from Mysore to Kaithun and that’s how this weave flourished in the town and the royal headgears — the pagdi, safa and odhni (veil) were all made from this airy fabric. This is why the Kota Doria saree is also known as Masuria (from Mysore).

A Doria saree has 70 per cent cotton threads and 30 per cent silk, sourced from Coimbatore and Bengaluru respectively, while the pure silver and gold zari is procured from Surat. Mohammad Sharif (33), a master weaver from the town, says, “Our Ansari community has been in this business for generations. Our prime occupation is weaving but now the craft is more in the hands of the women. My mother used to weave, aunt, sister all have been doing this work from a young age and now my nieces work alongside my sister. Women are the prime weavers here. There must be 2,500 weavers in Kaithun and 80 per cent of them are women. The men who weave are between 40 and 70 years of age. The younger men are not taking up weaving, they get into other jobs.”

As a master weaver, Sharif organises this work by procuring raw material, giving it to the weavers and then sends the finished products to various markets in the country. “The markets of Kota are flooded with cheap and expensive powerloom sarees sourced from Banaras. Handloom Doria sarees are more popular in the South,” Sharif adds.

A plain handloom saree would cost at least Rs 4,000. The maximum price can run into lakhs. There is a distinct way to tell the difference between a handloom and a powerloom saree other than the significant difference in price. A set of nine checks on the saree make a khat – a square pattern consisting of both cotton and silk threads. The beating of the silk and cotton threads is done differently on a handloom — the cotton is beaten with more vigour, the silk is done gently. This gives a uniform khat in a handloom saree as opposed to a powerloom where the khat is bigger as the machine puts equal stress on cotton and silk threads. Moreover, the edging of a handloom saree is rough while that made on a powerloom is smooth due to a machine finish.

The Ansari women weavers are mostly married in Kaithun itself and so the craft sustains in the town. Keshoraipatan, Roteda, Sultanpur, Bundi, Jhalawar — a few other places in the vicinity where the saree is woven — is also due to the women of Kaithun who married into these villages and set up their handlooms. Sharif’s aunt Shabnam Bano (43) shows a fresh-off-the-loom floral saree. “It took me 1.5 months to make this. Each day I work for 6-7 hours or more on the loom. I’ve been making sarees for 23 years. I used to make it at my parents’ place and then continued to do this in my marital home. My 19-year-old daughter can also weave an entire saree on her own.”

The lives of these women, too, fall into an intricate pattern, like the checks of the fabric they weave. Shaheen Bano (38), shares, “My day begins at 5.30-6 am. I take care of the morning household chores and then, after sending my children to school, I start working on the loom. My husband used to work as a lab technician but he lost his job during Covid, so now, he too weaves alongside me. We have a target of how many khat we would do in a day. We follow the design from a graph given to us by the master weaver. We follow it square by square. At 11, I get up to cook lunch, then after lunch, I again sit till 6 pm. Then, I get up to cook dinner and then post dinner I work on the loom late into the night. Between the two of us, we try to make at least two sarees a month. Even after this intensive work, the maximum earning we get in a month is Rs 18,000.”

Shaheen, who has been weaving from the time she was 12, explains the designing process on her loom through the floral pattern on the graph. “The colourful threads for the motifs are tied to the base threads by a designer who visits our home. We weave these threads in during the process. Sometimes, there is a mistake, and then we have to follow a long, tedious process of undoing it. The threads also break during weaving. But, irrespective of everything, I do like this work. This is what I know! I work hard to give a good life to my children and I’m already orienting my eight-year-old daughter into this. She goes to school and coaching, and then whatever time is left, I get her to sit with me and teach her.”

While the saree may have changed markets in terms of popularity – from the royal cities of Marwar region of Rajasthan in the earlier days, specifically catering to the Rajput and Jain women, to Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and now the southern states – its pure zari appeal hasn’t been tarnished due to the availability of inexpensive powerloom options. “There is a separate market for handloom. The saree is so comfortable and elegant that once a lady wears it, it becomes her preferred saree style. The patterns and colour palette evolve based on the demand. Earlier, the fabric used to be plain. Then bright, Rajasthani colours like red, magenta, yellow and blue made their way. Then came the small flowers. Now, elaborate jaal designs in multicolour are more sought after. We use the colour pink extensively. Out of three sarees that we make, at least one is pink,” Sharif explains. A few pieces at his workshop bring in elements of the other famous art of the Hadauti region – the Bundi miniature paintings woven in sarees – inspired by the Bundi School of Art.

The Kota Doria fabric in itself is a celebration of the feminine in the delicacy and strength of its texture. “As a girl reaches the age of 15, she begins working on the loom alongside her mother and other women relatives. If a family has two young girls, they instal two looms at their homes since the girls weave much faster than the married women who have to also look after their household. Today, if the girls refuse to weave, the art will not be able to sustain. It is entirely dependent on the young women of Kaithun,” Sharif says.

Art is a way of being for the handloom artisan, patiently sitting for hours on her loom, weaving in detailed patterns of life to be worn by another woman connoisseur from a far-away land, way beyond the limited space of her at-home workshop. But, the airy fabric that she weaves so delicately, secures the future of the art in the chequered pattern even as she works tirelessly for making ends meet.