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It’s the workshop of the not-for-profit social enterprise Banjara Kasuti that employs the rural women of the Banjara or the Lambani community, also called the gipsies of India. Back in the time of the Mughals, they were travelling traders, selling grains and spices across regions. Some records say that they moved to the south of India for an assignment for the Mughal king Aurangzeb.
But over time, as their traditional business became redundant, they had to migrate to different parts of the country for six to eight months a year to cut sugarcanes, harvest grapes or work as road construction labourers. The women’s rich craft, their embroidery with which they decorate their colourful ghagra cholis with as many as 23 stitches was slowly being forgotten as well. The wives had to accompany their husbands for arduous jobs, living in difficult, unhygienic conditions, and leaving their children behind in the care of their ageing grandparents. At work, it was hard to wear a heavy ghagra and choli with a dupatta embellished with several metal coins, heavy metal jewellery, and different kinds of stitches.
Vijaypura’s philanthropist Asha Patil and homemaker Seema Kishore together founded Banjara Kasuti to help these women get dignified, permanent jobs, so they don’t have to migrate for work, and have the time to practice their craft and tend to their children. “Being brought up in Vijaypura, I always admired Lambanis’ colourful outfits and their fine embroidery,” says Patil. “It saddened me to see their rich craft being forgotten,” she adds.
The Lambanis do not draw any patterns on clothes before embroidering it. The pattern emerges organically, sometimes, by three or four women working on the same skirt or a blouse. A few of their stitches are also quite unique. The Jod Muhiya in their dialect Gormati is a very fine stitch, which looks like a row of two crossed squares and straight stitches running on the top and the bottom on alternate rows. The Chale Chundri looks like a three-triangle leaf, the Tacha is diamonds dotted on each corner and Teka looks like a very fine plait.
The motifs of their craft are all related to nature as some records say that the community lived in forests in the earlier times. There’s the millipede, flowers, leaves, also corn, fish and the women’s round nose pin. “The mirrors reflecting light in the dark, and the bright colour outfits, easily visible from far away, were some of the means of protection adopted by the community that lived in the wild,” explains Kishore.
In 2017, Patil and Kishore employed 32 women and got them to embroider on swatches of clothes to test their skills. “Their work was very fine, but the finishing was poor,” says Kishore. “We had to train them to create uniform stitches, in one straight line and with finesse,” she adds. Kishore had to also convince them to work throughout the year and not migrate to the part-time work they were used to. But once they experienced the merits of working full-time in a clean, comfortable environment, and not doing arduous labour work, they were fully committed.
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