How weavers stitched together symbols of life

KOLKATA: Woven from memory by nim ble fingers, tribal carpets are much more than handicraft. Expressing everything from love, devotion, customs and traditions to daily life events, they are testimony to a vanishing way of life. The designs and colours are a reflection of the social history of nomadic tribes. The ongoing exhibition `Woven Memories: Stories from Tribal Carpets' of rare tribal carpets, at Puducherry's Aurodhan Gallery is more than a just a visual treat.
The 75 carpets on display are as much stories as they are works of art and belong to the private collections of Anil Menon, president of Cisco systems, and Danny Mehra, vicepresident, Charles Schwab.Sourced from countries across west Asia including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkey , many of the carpets are heirlooms and date back to early 19th to mid20th century . Each of these carpets apart from the stories of yore are associated with other contemporary tales that lend an air of mystery to them.“A carpet I once bought had a huge hole,“ remembered Mehra. “The dealer said it was made with the sword of a tribal chief! Another time the carpet was torn in one corner, but the dealer said it was bitten off by an angry camel which sounded so romantic,“ said Mehra, tongue firmly in cheek.
The embroidered symbols and icons tell the story of waning cultures and tradition. “We can all speculate on what the weaver intended to say though only the artisan would have known what she wanted to convey ,“ said Mehra. “Most symbols have a meaning. Trees indicate everlasting life, dogs indicate loyalty , while birds are a symbol of faith and human figures probably show members of the weaver's family or tribe. These put together make for stories about love and harmony,“ he explained.
Apart from stories, there are also deliberate mistakes woven in. “The reason is that these communities believed that no human hand can achieve perfection and that it is only for the divine,“ said Lalit Verma, art impresario and owner of Aurodhan Gallery which is hosting the exhibition till October 15.
But the lan guage of these an cient creations is not bound by any religion, stresses Mehra. “While most of the weav ing groups are Islamic now, many of them used to follow Shamanistic traditions be fore they con verted to Islam. And they still hold dear the tribal symbols.“ The nomadic nature of the weavers is also the reason why they have distinct similarities in pattern and colours.
“The weavers travelled freely and had friends from other tribes from other tribes from whom they borrowed ideas.
Most of these re gions used icons that were commonly used across all the countries in this region,“ said Mehra.
Despite the beauty of the carpets, they were not for just decorations for special occasions but served a functional purpose as well. “They are used for birthing, as prayer mats, doorways and meal mats. In a way, for these nomadic people, the carpets were their equivalent of a home. It's the patchwork on which their lives played out all their colours,“ said Verma.