The grey, rectangular workshed is in the greenest part of Tirunelveli district. The road leading to it in Pathamadai village twists and turns through paddy fields, ponds pink with lotuses and a horizon blue with hills. But the route is forgotten once you are inside the shed, with its high windows and hot sunlight. Everywhere, there is colour: in the mats that grow on the looms one thread at a time, in the bundles of brightly dyed korai, and in the special wedding mat with the names of the groom and bride— ‘Girish weds Sneha’—in deep purple, jade green and rani pink. Sitting by the looms placed on the floor, their pallus drawn over their heads, are the weavers of the famous Pathamadai pai, or mat. They stretch their legs, cross their feet and press their big toes against the tripod that anchors the loom, as they chat, mind the children and calculate wages. There are about a hundred weavers in the village, mostly women from the Muslim community. Of the twenty in this group, five are state and district award winners. They earn, on an average, nine rupees an hour. Yet they queue up daily for a chance to weave the mat that has both an interesting past—it was once gifted to Queen Elizabeth—and future—it received thegeographical indication tag in 2012–13.
At least five generations have made floor mats in Pathamadai, said S. Zeenath Beevi, who heads the women’s self-help group cooped up in this workshop. She spent her whole life in the village, like her grandmother, mother, sisters and daughters. They have woven mats since they were ten, but have only this workshop on rented land to show for their craftsmanship, even as their rich mats adorn grand homes in towns and cities. Often, customers complain about the high prices of the mats—ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs 5,500, depending on the size, material, complexity and count—about why they are charged so much for something to sleep on. They don’t factor in the experience and knowledge of several generations and the backbreaking labour of women who spend the entire day bent over floor looms in a small cemented room. Mindful of their time—each hour lost is nine rupees lost—the women explained the process of making the mats, as they sat at their looms, weaving with the kuchaali—a four-foot long wooden needle—and coloured threads, their hands keeping time with their eyes, swift and graceful at once, the movements repetitive, almost meditative. They chatted, yelled to each other across the room and instructed little boys in lungis, shirts and caps who drifted in and out. Young ones cried until a mother or an aunt scooped them up and on to a hip. Through all this, the sound of the kuchaali and achu, a piece of wood that compresses the korai, remained steady, without missing a beat, as the mats grew from the looms. Pathamadai’s famous mats come in two varieties. Fine mats are typically made from commercially cultivated korai—a tall, grasslike plant—belonging to the Cyperus family. The superfine variety, also called pattu pai or silk mat, is made from wild korai that grows along the river Thamirabarani in the region.
It takes the women an hour to weave five to eight inches of a fine mat, the length and speed increasing with experience. There are about 50 korai threads per 9 inches for a fine mat, whereas there are 100–140 for a superfine mat. Though it does not look dense on the loom, after the mat is woven, the korai fibres are pushed closer and twisted, compressing a band of colours a few inches apart to two fingers’ width. Nearly all the women in the group are related, by birth or, more often, by marriage. ‘We don’t give our daughters in marriage outside,’ said Zeenath, as a cooker whistled from her house next door. Lunch was getting ready and the chatter in the room got louder. Women came and went, delivery dates were discussed, one waited for her wages, another measured the portion she had completed the previous day with an inch tape. A long and complex calculation later, she was paid Rs 105.
‘Marrying within the community helps keep the skills alive,’ said historian, writer and award-winning filmmaker Kombai S. Anwar. ‘That way, the daughter-in-law, who knows the weaving tradition, is an asset. The Tamil Muslim community is very entrepreneurial. They aren’t confined to one geography. It spans from Pulicat in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. Many are into trading. Some have become big corporates, but the majority are content with their small and medium enterprises. It’s also a very cohesive group, very supportive. If you’re willing to put in the hard work, people will help you.’ Thirty to forty years ago, it was the men who made the mats. Zeenath’s father K. Rahamathullah is an award-winning mat weaver. She held out his visiting card, which had a stern photograph of him, with ‘National Award 2003’ and ‘Shilpa Guru Award 2011’ printed above his name. He also used to be a medicine man and the muezzin, calling his village men to pray at the palli vaasal.
The men gradually drifted away from mat weaving because of the low wages, whereas the women find working from home to be an advantage. Many of the men now have migrated to the Gulf countries, with salaries ranging from ten thousand to a lakh rupees. Zeenath’s husband, her aunt’s son, too worked in Saudi Arabia for fifteen years in a vegetable shop and returned home in February 2018. They stayed in a series of rented houses till 2013 when they finally built their own. It was also the same year in which the women rented a piece of land, on which their workshop now stands.
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Mat weaving is an art as much as it is a craft. It involves not only keeping the cotton threads taut or fixing new threads on the loom or even weaving but also the complex calculation that goes on in the maker’s mind as she chooses a coloured korai thread. The eight looms in the workshop that day were testimony: each unfinished mat had a different pattern and colour scheme, each a mark of individuality of the weaver. Design weaving calls for good eyesight and skill. The cotton warp threads are lifted up and down so that the korai weft threads make the design. These hardworking artisans, with a keen desire to improve their lives, need more than just help with marketing or a small parcel of land—their ask is about two thousand square feet—to build their own workshop. A holistic approach that understands the community and all its needs will take it far. Without that, they will continue to struggle in a market that favours and rewards all that is cheap, fast and plenty. ‘Write about us,’ the women said as I was leaving. They want people to know how hard it is to do this work, apart from running their homes, and how they pay for saapadu and sowriyam, or food and comfort, with their earnings: nine rupees an hour.