The term “weaver” may seem ancient because we as Indians heard about the greatness of the weavers of our country right from the time before independence.  It was Gandhiji’s idea to use khadi(a type of material that is made of cotton, silk fibres and hand weaved using a spinning wheel)  that revolutionised the freedom movement in India. Every Indian pledged to support the khadi movement and weavers were an integral part of it. So when I got to witness the weaving process perform right before me I couldn’t resist myself from expressing my thoughts on it.

We visited Gadwal which is a place in Telengana State, India very recently. Gadwal is a place that is famous for two main reasons one which is for the beautiful forts that were built by the great kings of the bygone era and the other reason was for the wonderful and superb art of weaving. This art of weaving is very specific to this place and it cannot be found anywhere in the world. Wonderful Saris are produced from these weaving operations which are famously called the “Gadwal Saris”.

Sari, famously called the nine yards is one of the traditional wear of India. The sari is not just limited to one region in our country but various parts of our country make different varieties of saris and it depends on the raw material and the techniques which are specific to that region but all together are combined under the big umbrella of Saris.

One among these numerous varieties of saris is the Gadwal Sari. The Saris that are made here are woven from the silk and cotton threads that are carefully aligned along a large hollow table like arrangement and using a lever and pulley arrangement these threads are inter woven. The local weavers are so skilled that they are able to finish a 7 yard sari in 4 months of time. It may seem a long time but to the people who actually know the weaving aspects and the difficulties involved in them will definitely know the value of time.

The process of weaving is a very tedious one and almost 9 to 10 hours a day are spent by the weavers for the weaving process. It was told to us that the local weavers can weave the 5.5 meters of sari fabric in such a way that it can be folded down to the size of a small match box which awestruck us. It is not at all a simple task to weave the sari and when I saw the weavers doing their work I was convinced by this a lot.

Not only the men do the weaving work but also the women too take part in the weaving process in other words it could be said that the weaving process was not just something to do to earn money but a family tradition to do weaving. Even the children of the family know the tricks of weaving and it amazed me as to how the children were involved in the weaving process.

But one sad thing is that the numbers of weavers at Gadwal are decreasing due to the competition faced by the large scale production of artificial saris which are produced at a rate of thousands of saris per day. So the Government of Telengana has taken up some initiatives to help the weavers to increase their production. Also much advertising have been done to promote the Gadwal Sari.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the weavers at Gadwal and learned many interesting and amazing things about them. I learned that the value of art is priceless and it must be preserved in every possible way.