City Of Weaves

“Benares is older than history, older than tradition…,” said Mark Twain, and indeed it’s one of the oldest continually inhabited cities of the world. With the sacred Ganga flowing through it, this city is the bedrock of spirituality. It is also the home of India’s biggest handloom legacy. Designer SaByaSachI Mukherjee meets BaNDaNa TeWarI on the banks of the enshrined assi Ghats to talk about his great passion—the Benarasi weave

Against the high banks of the ancient ghats stands Benares, a strange ‘myth-opolis’— magical and menacing in equal measure, cradling the earthly duplexity of life and death. In this holy city of more than 23,000 temples, the sacred Ganga meanders in the moonlight, iridescent with spiritual promise, and in sunlight foggy with the cast-offs of urban life that float like sad memories but never sink. The significance of the waters of Ganga is cosmic in proportion, immersed in promises of divinity, redemption and liberation. She swallows whole the woes of the world and is the bottomless repository of primeval rituals (for instance, frogs married by priests and released in her waters) even as she becomes the watery pyre for more than 80 corpses that float down the glistening waters every day.

Benares or Varanasi grew as an important centre famous for its silks and muslin, perfume, ivory works and silver. It was the cynosure of cultural and intellectual activity; even today the colossal Benaras Hindu University houses close to 20,000 students. This city’s music tradition continues to celebrate classical musical styles or gharanas, pulsating with the devotional and the thrilling with equal aplomb.

While spirituality is the arterial chord that connects the entire city to Mother Earth, there is another thread that binds it together—the Benares weave. This is a city of master weavers who spin magic with gold and silver brocade or zari and create silk saris of such creative purity that it is said when Buddha attained nirvana his body was wrapped in this fabric. This weave has existed for over 2,000 years; the Rig Veda mentions the harianyadrapi, or the shining gold-woven cloth. India’s two greatest magnum opuses, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, also speak of this cloth, steeped in centuries of tradition, an opulent sari taking up as many as six months to complete.