We Craft Our Lives...: Another day in paradise ....

Today was another day of fun , laughter and excitement. It started off with a short bus ride to the village of Napaser , situated less than 30 kms from Bikaner. We travelled through the vast deserts of Rajasthan in a local bus with rusty seats that were filled with inquisitive Indians ,wondering what a group of foreigners and an Indian girl (with a strange haircut) were doing on the bus. Once they had enquired about our plans in the village and our whereabouts , they turned around smiled at us and got back to listening to their loud 80’s Hindi music.

Once we got off the bus , we took an auto to one of Rangasutra’s weaving units, where we had our lunch and waited for the school to open .While we were there we saw some of their woven samples and were also shown how the handlooms work . It amazed us to see how talented weavers really are. If you think you are good at multi-tasking ? wait till you meet a weaver! It takes an immense amount of concentration, co-ordination and skill to master the art of weaving . All four of his limbs were performing different tasks at the same time, all in different directions. His feet were alternately pushing the peddle in an upwards and down motion , his left hand was firing the flying shuttle containing the bobbin of weft yarn from left to right. And his right hand was pulling the reed forward to compact the warp yarns at a 45 degree angle , alternating it’s direction from right to left.

Us in the weaving unit with their hand embroidered Indian Flag

Here we were shown their various textile samples and explained to us the different types of weave.

We are shown first hand the different weave processes, showing the skill the weavers have to make the beautiful Samples we saw previously.

The clock struck 2.00 and it was time for us to go to the school , we had a cup of ‘chai’ and walked down the road , in the scorching heat with the rhythmic sounds of loom still beating in our heads.

At the school , we were greeted with warm smiles and some innocent , scared faces. The yellow walls of the school were filled with charts of alphabets and colours and had around 10 students , between the age group of 7 and 25. After a little introductory session , we showed the students images from an Austrian magazine that Christina had brought along with her from home . They were amazed to see the kind of food and lifestyle that exists beyond their humble little village. They couldn’t understand why people don’t eat ‘rajma – chaval’ and 'roti - sabzi' in other parts of the world , or why none of us girls were married yet. They found it strange that Katherine had her chin pierced and couldn’t believe the fact that none of us wore a ‘payal’ ( anklet) . Most of the students spoke Maarvadi and not Hindi , so each sentence needed to be translated from English to Hindi to Maarvadi and backwards. Since language seemed to be a huge barrier ,We showed them pictures of cartoon animals that we had drawn out for them on little cards and taught them the names of the animals in English while they guessed in Hindi. The students in this school took a longer time to open up to us as compared to the girls we met yesterday, but they were both equally bright. We finally got them to dance for us and teach us some of their dance moves , this definitely broke the ice and made things more interactive and got the girls to open up more. One of the ladies there was very keen on us wearing saris , so she ran home and within minutes she came back with some colourful saris that they dressed us up in . It’s incredible how talented and smart these girls and women really are, they have so much potential , if only they had more freedom and were allowed to do more with their lives .But maybe they don’t want more,they seemed so happy with what little they have learnt because now it allows them to read the daily newspapers and read what’s on the bar of soap that they buy to wash their clothes or the price of products in the provision store. They are so content with their lives here , that it makes us wonder if we really need all those ‘wants’ that we crave for every single day . Why not just crave for smaller things in life ,something as simple as happiness !

After a long afternoon of dancing, singing , colouring, taking pictures , playing dress up and making new friends , it was unfortunately time for us to say good bye . We had another round of ‘chai’ said our goodbye’s and were back to walking in the sweltering heat . After a long walk to the bus depot , we got onto the bus (that we nearly missed )and made our way back to Bikaner. The best part about getting back from a long day’s work is that even though we are all so far away from home , it still feels like home. Thanks to the lovely family that we are staying with that treat us like their own daughters.