In Assam, Weaving the Kheta of the Bengali Muslims
Stitching the divide between kheta and gamusa.
In Nagaon’s Dagaon village in Assam, you will find many women who know how to sew the kheta, a handmade recycled quilt.
by Nasreen Habib
WHEN YOU ENTER DAGAON, one of the nine villages that make up Nagaon district in Assam, you are welcomed by a gurgling river, Kolong which swells in the monsoon but is now dry. A wooden bridge painted in solemn black is the only connect with the outside world. Further ahead is the bustling Erabari bazaar, where engulfed in a cloud of dust, irregular shops line the way. The shops have tin roofs and sturdy bamboo shutters, and mostly sell everyday items of use: utensils, medicines, clothes; the bazaar even has a mobile repairing shop. It does not, however, sell what the women of the village sew: embroidered blankets that keep you warm in the winter and on unseasonably cold monsoon days. For in every household, you will find a woman who knows how to sew the kheta, a handmade recycled quilt.
Running parallel to the bazaar is the Dagaon railway line under Lumding Junction, which has been running continuously for the last 40 years or so. Beyond this are rice fields, warm with the autumn sun, and a cluster of mud huts with tin roofs and encircled by a jute fence. One of them is Jamila Khatoon’s house. It is lunch time and she is making a special hot chutney of dry fish and dry red chillies tempered with mustard oil, locally known as chepa. It is cheap and a good source of protein, which is why it is popular with the workers from the Bengal-origin Muslim community. Her younger child is curled up on a kheta. Rather than a piece of art, it is supposed to be a utilitarian product. It is made by stitching together old cotton sarees and sometimes, to give it that extra fluffiness, a used mosquito net is neatly sewn between the layers of cloth. The stitch is the katha stitch, a running stitch that goes around in equidistant elongated strips. Its name is said to come from the Sanskrit word for rags but the vibrant patchwork upon layers of patterned sarees is more beautiful than its name belies. On the chars (small riverine islands on the river Brahmaputra), as Abdul Kalam Azad , a resident of Barpeta town and a researcher, points out, the stitch runs more closely together while the khetas made in and around Barpeta town have more space between them. In Dagaon village, however, much like on the chars, the stitch runs closely enough.
The kheta in Jamila’s house has seen better days, as the layered fabric is tearing at the seams. It is said that the condition of a kheta can tell you about the prosperity of a household. Jamila’s household comprises of her two young children, her mother-in-law and an absent husband. Since her husband has not been getting regular agricultural work, the whole burden has fallen on her shoulders. Having studied at the Bhakatgaon ME High School till the sixth standard, she dropped off to help her mother with her younger sisters and was married off a year later, at the age of 15 and a half.
Jamila is well-known among the women of her village as a good seamstress, her specialty being the kheta. Earlier, most women of the village stitched their own khetas but many women of economically sounder households have started outsourcing this work to women like Jamila. Arsia Sarkar, 46, says, ‘We have moved to using Chinese blankets now, they are more durable. But our weakness for the kheta remains as its texture and feel is more comfortable, especially for younger children many of whom react to the synthetic fibres used in a Chinese blanket.’
A Chinese blanket costs upward of 1000 rupees, but the stitching of a kheta pays around Rs 100–150. In Victorian England, men stitched/embroidered hankies and other items of use, but with the advent of industrialization in the 18th century, the task was delegated to machines. Around the same time, women took up stitching as a ‘leisure’ activity, and in many English novels of the day, the women are found stitching when they have time while the men work.
In popular culture, Assam is represented by gamusas, japis, mekhela-sadors, finely woven axomiya jewellery and bell metal utensils. But the arts and crafts of the Muslims of Bengal origin are still not a part of mainstream culture, in fact, even within the community, there has been little advancement in this regard. This is a direct result of the community’s fight with erosion as the Brahmaputra has swallowed up most of the char chaporis where a majority of the community lives. Unlike in neighbouring West Bengal, where the katha stitch is seen on almost everything — from saris to bedsheets to coasters and folders, in Assam, the stitch has not made a similar transition. It has remained confined to the kheta as a utilitarian item. Even within this confined space, it has jazzed up bedspreads with its colourful, embellished presence.
Nasreen Habib is a Guwahati-based journalist. She has previously worked with Eclectic Northeast, Oxford University Press, Dorling Kindersley and Katha Books.