Balochi Film Ustad Pattu

[Lucrecio Poinson]

Thekera was originally woven on a backstrap loom, and later the card loom from the mid-twentieth century. It is woven as a two-faced fabric, with the patterns visible on both sides. The warp threads at the ends are twisted into a fringe, which was left much longer in older keras than in newer ones. Typically between 180 and 240 centimetres long, the kera is wrapped several times around the waist with the fringe tucked in on the outside, serving to secure it. Older keras were sometimes woven two at a time, as a single long piece of cloth with intricate patterning at each end and sparse decoration towards the centre. Once woven, it would be split down the middle weft to produce two keras, each with a fringe on only one end. Contemporary keras have a fringe at both ends, allowing them to be wrapped from either end.

In the 1960s, weavers in Thimphu introduced a narrower version of the kera, which became popular after upper class women wore it during the coronation of former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1974. The modern kera is between 5 and 8 centimetres wide, and is worn more tightly than older keras, reflecting changing body perceptions and cultural associations, and a preference for slimmer silhouettes. Although the broad kera is no longer in fashion, it is still woven by older women in parts of rural Bhutan.

At the time of writing, the kera remains significant as an essential component of Bhutanese dress, and continues to be worn in its modern and traditional iterations across the country. Contemporary versions of the belt are also made of synthetic yarn such as acrylic, with metallic thread used for decorative patterns.

Certain traditions of needlework often serve practical functions along with ornamental ones. Appliqu traditions such as pipili, tharu, kantha, and khatwa repurpose fabric from old or damaged garments to make everyday items that include quilts, such as the kowdhi, and bags. Pieces of old fabric are often strategically composed to yield distinctive, aesthetically pleasing designs.

Many of these techniques are complex enough to have resisted mechanisation, such as those of beetle wing and sozni embroidery. Several others use unique, purpose-made tools like the ari, a hooked needle like that used in crochet.

It is made using an extra-weft technique called thrima, in which weft threads of various colours are added to the ground weft. This is done by lifting certain warp threads with a stick and coiling the new weft threads around them in a discontinuous manner to create a variety of motifs and patterns. This results in a raised weave that resembles chain-stitch embroidery, with the motifs showing up only on the front of the fabric. A kushuthara piece is woven in three parts that are sewn together lengthwise to be worn as a kira.

Some of the earliest examples of kushuthara fabric are seen in the kushung, a centuries-old garment that was worn by women belonging to the Lhuntse and Trashiyangtse districts. This comprises two kushuthara panels sewn together lengthwise and folded over at the shoulders, with a hole cut out for the head and neck. The edges on the sides of the body were sewn together leaving an arm hole on each side. Today kushuthara is mainly worn as the kira, an unstitched garment for women that is wrapped around the body and fastened at the shoulders. For a kira, three kushuthura panels are sewn together lengthwise and the edges are given long fringes. It is worn so that the warp stripes run horizontally.

While it is the older women with decades of training who traditionally undertake elaborate kushutharas, the younger generation is being encouraged to pursue the craft, particularly as traditional kushutharas have found a profitable market today. Popular within the country for its use in the national dress, the fabric has also gained international recognition. While the most highly valued kushuthara are made by small-scale weavers, particularly in Khoma, their demand has led to several weaving centres producing these fabrics using synthetic materials on a larger scale.

A type of sacred garment in Islamic culture, talismanic shirts were believed to protect their wearers from bodily and spiritual harm. Intricately ornamented with sacred motifs and verses from the Quran, they were made for royalty or high-ranking individuals, particularly for military contexts, where they are thought to have been worn under the armour. With their earliest known examples dating to the fifteenth century, these shirts were made in Muslim courts of the Indian subcontinent, Ottoman Anatolia, Safavid Persia and West Africa, with stylistic variations based on geography and patronage. Talismanic shirts made in the Indian subcontinent form the most cohesive group among these in terms of their design and iconography, and are unique in that they have the entire Quran inscribed on their surface. Attributed to the Sultanate and Mughal courts in northern India and the Deccan and dated between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, they closely parallel the Quran manuscripts made in these courts.

Such shirts were made from the plain-weave cotton indigenous to India, which was sized using a starchy solution in order to make the surface stiff and smooth in order to be able to paint easily and intricately on it. The result is a paper- or parchment-like material, which would have made it difficult to use the shirt as a garment for any prolonged use. The ink and pigments used are also water-soluble and prone to smudging or running upon getting wet. Little is known about how exactly these talismanic shirts were used, and scholars speculate that they may have served symbolic, ritual purposes rather than as a garment. However, stains and smudges from sweat have been found on some of these shirts, including the V&A specimen, suggesting that they were worn at least for some time.

At the time of writing, about fifteen other specimens of Indian talismanic shirts are known to be housed across museums and private collections around the world, including the Salar Jung Museum, India; the Khalili Foundation, UK; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, USA.

The most basic form of the charkha, the floor or table-top charkha, comprises an asymmetrical U-shaped wooden frame or pedestal, which holds a large spoked wheel on its higher arm and a horizontally mounted spindle on the other end, with a drive band connecting the two. The spindle is fed by a distaff, the rod onto which the raw carded (cleaned and combed) fibre has been gathered. The user of the charkha holds the distaff in one hand, at an appropriate distance and angle to the spindle, and turns the wheel with the other hand. The slow turning of the wheel spins the spindle fast enough to tightly twist and pull the fibre from the distaff to yield yarn, which is wound around the spindle. The driving wheel of the charkha is either a spoked wheel with a rim, or a rimless one with two or three layers of spokes. The speed of the spinning and the tautness of the yarn are entirely determined by the user, and the process is intermittent as the spun yarn must be periodically transferred onto a bobbin and new fibre introduced from the distaff.

Featuring frequently in imagery of the freedom struggle, in 1921 the charkha was adopted as the central emblem for the flag of the Provisional Government of Free India. Even though the symbol was later reduced to a single central wheel, representing the Ashokan chakra, the charkha remains associated with the Indian flag today. Modernist artists such as MF Husain and Jamini Roy have also used the nationalist symbol in their work, usually as a representation of rural life and the labour of traditional art forms.

Pattu fabrics are classified into several different types, based on their region of origin and pattern of motifs and colours used. The simple pattu comprises a plain base in a neutral colour, with no motifs and adorned with only a border, and is commonly used for shawls for older men in the region. Traditionally, brightly coloured shawls are used by young men, and chequered patterns by the women. Some of the most widely used pattu patterns are hiravalli, which comprises a colourful triple line pattern, and chatri-kangsia, which features temple and pellet drum motifs and is also known as Kashida pattu because of the intricate Kashmiri embroidery it resembles. Others include bhojasari from Jaisalmer, featuring triangular motifs with horizontal stripes in the border; malani from Barmer, which is densely ornamented all over its surface and typically features a fish motif; and bardi and bakla, which have a chequered pattern. Lunkar pattu features a predominantly red body and is used exclusively to make smaller shawls for women.

The silkworm is the larval stage in the life cycle of the silk moth, following mating and egg-laying. The larva moults four times before spinning a cocoon around itself using a protein secretion that hardens into silk on contact with air. Except in the case of the eri silkworm, this is a single continuous fibre, which may be over a kilometre long. The cocoon fibre comprises two filaments of the protein fibroin, held together by a smaller amount of viscous protein called sericin. While the fibroin is white, the colour of the sericin varies across silkworm species, imparting different colours to the natural silk fibres. The cocoon offers protection to the larva during its transformation via the pupa and chrysalis stages into an adult, the imago, which finally pierces the cocoon and flies out as a moth. In the bulk of commercial sericulture, the moth stage is not reached as silk is extracted during the cocoon stage, in order to obtain an unbroken length of silk fibre.

The majority of silk production today is domesticated, with the above process taking place in highly controlled environments. However, the tussar and muga worms are wild and harvested in their natural habitat, often because it is not possible to domesticate the trees that they feed on.

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