Arpita Chakrabarty

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

large_01-Arti_Bona_weaving_a_blanket_while_her_mother_Lathi_Devi_looks_on.JPG3-A.jpg

medium_01-Arti_Bona_weaving_a_blanket_while_her_mother_Lathi_Devi_looks_on.JPG3-A.jpg

small_01-Arti_Bona_weaving_a_blanket_while_her_mother_Lathi_Devi_looks_on.JPG3-A.jpg

thumbnail_01-Arti_Bona_weaving_a_blanket_while_her_mother_Lathi_Devi_looks_on.JPG3-A.jpg

01-Arti_Bona_weaving_a_blanket_while_her_mother_Lathi_Devi_looks_on.JPG3-A.jpg

Crushed stones
are piled in front of nearly every house along the main narrow lane of Gothi hamlet,
along with several sacks. Women of all ages, schoolgirls too, sit on top of these
coarse heaps, crushing the stones one by one with hammers and clamps. Men play
carrom and cards outside the houses in the lane, after having quarried the
stones from the mountains and river beds. 




















Gothi, a hamlet of Kalika panchayat village, is on the way from the Jauljibi market area to Dharchula town in eastern Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand. Two rivers
– the Kali and Gori – meet at Jauljibi, and there is the constant sound of water. Nepal is a few metres away, with narrow foot bridges connecting
the two countries.  The bridges are as
shaky as the lives of the people living on either side of them.

Fulmati Hunar,
32, the cook at the government school in the village, says, “It is difficult to
get a job here. During the summer, we go back to our upper-Himalayan homes.” These
are in the villages of Go and
Baun in Darma valley in the upper Himalayas, close to the India-China
border. 

Here, at altitudes of 2,500 metres, many families
collect yarsagumba for about 45 days, from mid-May. Yarsagumba
is a rare and valuable fungus with medicinal properties, though only a portion
of its high-value international trade emanating from this region is legal. The
people also collect kitchen herbs for sale in various parts of the Kumaon region. “We earn by
selling those herbs,” Fulmati says. “However, that is not enough to run a home.
So, we crush and sell these stones.”

Local middlemen buy the crushed stones and sell
them to contractors who are building roads or houses. It is almost a year-round
activity, that has increased after the 2013 flood. In June that year, most of Uttarakhand
received unprecedented rainfall. Water from the overflowing Kali river washed
away many houses and roads in Gothi, Naya Basti, Kalika and Balwakot in Dharchula block.  The stones are used to rebuild these houses and
roads – as well as make new ones.     

Each sack of
crushed stones fetches Rs. 45, Fulmati says. In a day, she can fill two sacks.
“Some women sell three sacks a day. It takes a lot of time, because there are
household chores to be done as well,&quot; she says, busy making an egg curry
at the school.

In one of the alleys
of Gothi, two women are placing pieces of stone on bigger ones, holding them down
with clamps, and hammering them. The stones shatter. Their hands, feet and faces
are grey with the dust. They don’t wear any protective gloves or masks.
“Sometimes, tiny pieces of stone get in our eyes and we rush to the hospital
[in Dharchula, six kilometres away]. Sometimes our fingers are injured. But
that is all,” says 65-year-old Batuli Devi. It is afternoon, and she has
collected a sack full of stones. She says she will work until the daylight
fades. 

Crushing stones has
become a full-time livelihood activity for the women of Gothi not only because
of the increased demand for the stones, but also because of the falling demand
for their traditional handwoven products. Most of the women here are from the Bhotiya tribe, known for
their excellent weaving skills. They can weave anything, from mats to blankets,
sweaters to socks, all from wool fetched from herds of sheep in the region. Weaving
is what the Bhotiya women most enjoy. This was how they used to earn a living. Their
craft commanded respect. But that was in another time, recalls Batuli Devi. 

Now the wooden looms – many were washed away or
damaged in the flood and had to be remade – are gathering dust in the corners
of many homes. Some of the looms that survived the flood are a hundred years
old, handed down as precious gifts from mothers to daughters and daughters-in-law.
The weaving skills too have been passed down the generations. “If nothing else,
a Bhotiya girl will know how to weave and make wine [from wheat],” says Kismati
Devi, 52.

Fulmati says they
used to make chutkhas,
thick blankets made of pure wool, and sell them at the annual Jauljibi mela in
November. The blanket is heavy, ideal for the cold climate of Kumaon. “Our
fathers and brothers would go to Almora and Pithoragarh town to sell the chutkhas. “Each is priced between
3,500 and 6,000 rupees, depending on the purity of the wool. But it takes hard
labour and a lot of time to make,” says Fulmati&#39;s mother, Suppu Devi. “About 15–20
days to make a chutkha
if one spins all day long. Sometimes it can take three months to complete
one piece.”

But this
handmade blanket does not sell much anymore. “Nobody wants to pay more than Rs.
2,000 when you can get blankets and quilts much cheaper,” says Suppu Devi, as
she unwraps the yarn for my camera. A chutkha survives
many generations, at least a hundred years. 

The women have also traditionally made thulma
(another type of blanket), pattu (a coarse woollen rug), pankhi
(a woollen wrapper), dann (carpet) and asan (prayer mat). The elegant
embellishments on the mats and carpets are similar to Tibetan motifs – with bright
geometric patterns, auspicious symbols and
flowers.But now the looms are only used occasionally to make the rugs and mats.  A pair of asan – long, narrow and intricate – can be sold for Rs. 20,000; bigger carpets can cost more. But the buyers are few. Low-cost synthetic blankets, rugs and wrappers from the India-China border trade and from the plains, including Punjab, have replaced these traditional woollen products in Kumaoni homes. The women now make chutkhas only for their families or for pujas and festivals within the Bhotiya community.

“We don’t like coming out on the road and breaking stones, but we don’t know how else to make money,” says Shanti Devi, who is crushing stone not far from where Batuli Devi is working, focussing on them with her clamp and hammer. A few sacks stand against each other nearby, with two men filling more. These heaps of crushed stones are everywhere in Dharchula and Munsiari blocks of Pithoragarh district. So are the women and girls crushing them, amid this wide open landscape, with a mountain reaching up to touch the sky. The physical space is vast, but the skills and livelihoods of the people living here are now severely constrained.

From creating carpets to crushing stones

قالین کی بُنائی کرنے والے ہاتھ پتھر توڑنے کو مجبور

বুনকারি ছেড়ে পাথর ভাঙার শ্রমে রত পাহাড়িয়া মেয়েরা

கம்பளம் உருவாக்குவாது முதல் கற்களை உடைப்பது வரை

ସୃଜନଶୀଳ ସତରଞ୍ଜିରୁ ପଥର ଭାଙ୍ଗିବା

কার্পেটত সাগৰ ৰচা শিপিনী হ'লগৈ শিল ভঙা শ্রমিক

Dharchula

At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.PARI exists to change that.We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.&nbsp;

Donate FAQs


Let’s get you acquainted

Welcome to PARI

All our content is, and will forever be free to consume. If you enjoy our work, you can support us by becoming a volunteer or by donating to help fund our work.

Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

IN TELUGU - Want to republish this article? Please write to <a href="mailto:zahra@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">zahra@ruralindiaonline.org</a> with a cc to <a href="mailto:namita@ruralindiaonline.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">namita@ruralindiaonline.org</a>

From creating carpets to crushing stones

Women of the Bhotiya community in Uttarakhand’s Gothi hamlet earn an income by breaking quarried stones – and recall a time when their weaving skills brought them respect as well as financial returns

Related stories

A rain-scented walk in Sivagangai

Living on ravaged land

Biswas and the bamboos on his bike

Recycling energy, Godda style

Bhadels of Goa

Pookadai: still throbbing with morning life

Koli Kadlas

Malnourishment high among children of migrants: study

Wheels of the rural Indian West

Living Under a Red Cloud in Bellary

Vedla – earrings of the Maher community

Dreaming of water, drowning in debt

Kali: the dancer and his dreams

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

In Yavatmal, life goes on

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

Death of a carpenter

Hoisa Shigmo!

Women farmers: weaving a life in Anantapur

Defiant in Dhinkia

Spice and all that's nice

Kerala's Green Army

The ‘jugaad’ not-a-mobile

Health as someone else's wealth

Calibrating in a Kudumbashree assembly unit