On the banks of the Beki river in Barpeta

The purple flowers on the anchal of Ambiya Khatun’s white worn-out saree are fluttering in the November wind as she struggles to cover her hair. Her right hand moves to her head to maintain her purdah while she keeps rolling, beading and knotting the jumbled-up jute fabric. Ambiya is keenly aware of the gaze of men passing by her temporary home on the edge of a marsh. The eroded banks of the Beki river are a place where privacy is in abeyance during the monsoon floods.

Seated on the floor of her house, Ambiya is making sikas (also called sigas) – decorative hangers made of jute fiber, and used to hang utensils, seeds, clothing, mattresses and even jewellery. The sika is not just a decorative piece but a culturally important artefact, popular among Miya Muslims of Assam as well as the peasantry of present-day Bangladesh. A sika also keep things dry in these flood prone areas.

The 71-year-old master craftswoman has been at work since before dawn, finishing household chores before settling down to her craft. Her workplace is the front yard of her single-room tin and thatch house set in the shade of an ashgourd plantation. The colourful beads glint in the sunlight filtering through the canopy of wide, green ashgourd vine leaves.

Ambiya lives in Khar Balli, in a community of largely Miya Muslim farmers. The Beki river – an important tributary of the Brahmaputra – passes through this village in Barpeta district, and floods annually. “Floods have destroyed my home 25 times. Now I don’t even go to relief camps anymore. With food or without food, I stay here only,” Ambiya tells PARI, referring to the small plot that doubles as her home and farmland – a half bigha (0.16 acre) of land given by a generous villager.

It is here that Ambiya turns out many types of sika – khetar sika (to store quilts and bedding), thalir sika (to keep plates and utensils), gamsar sika (to keep towels), bisoner sika (to keep hand fans), jhuha sika (a set to keep utensils or use in seed preservation), and many more, each selling for Rs. 400 to 1,500 each.

Parents of girls getting married turn to her for the critical jute hangers – an essential item gifted to girls at their wedding, along with sheetal paati (traditional handwoven mats).

This is the busiest season for her. “Aghun maash thaike magh maash porjonto, pratyek graame 10-12 biya thake, taine? Meyer baape jane je sika deun lagboi meyer ghar sajabar jonne [From the second half of October to January, say 10-12 weddings take place every month in every village? The fathers of the brides know that they must give the jute hangers to their daughters so that the girl can decorate her home],” says Ambiya.

When she was younger, had better eyesight and was able to sit for longer durations, she could finish a decorative siga in just two to three days. When a marriage came up suddenly, Ambiya would light up a kerosene lamp and braid naksi sigas through the night. Naksi or naksha means artistic design or decoration. Skilled women would twist, braid and knot the jute fiber to make various types of sikas.

With advancing age and a painful back, she cannot sit for long hours now and it takes up to two months to finish one sika.

Her nimble fingers must continuously roll the messy jute fiber while beading and wrapping colourful threads into the braids to form various knots. “It’s a lot of pressure [on her fingers]. My fingers don’t work when I go to get ration,” says Ambiya, pointing out how biometric reading machines fail to read her fingerprints.

Working on sikas is seen as work for younger women, and she says people expect her to just sit around, and enjoy her meals! “Ami ki ogor barit thaike kheye aisi [Have I eaten from their home]?” asks Ambiya, brushing aside these taunts.

For Ambiya, making the jute hangers is not just about money; it is a passion and nostalgia of the time when she lived in a large joint family. “I learnt weaving sikas from observing my mother, sisters-in-law, and aunts. My father would sit there for hours and enjoy it as if it were some kind of entertainment – the making of beautiful knots,” adds the daughter of a former local jurist.

“Everyone is dead now and the land is also gone.” Her hands do not stop braiding but her smile wanes. But then it’s back when she adds, “people would ask me to cook when they organised any majlis, they would specially invite me to weddings and make sure I cooked the food.”

Making sikas starts with sourcing jute fibre in the village. “My nephew-in-law gave me this jute. Earlier, we grew jute before erosion took away all our 50 bigha (roughly 17 acres) land. Now people give the jute for free,” she says, referring to the practice of donations of two to three kilos of jute by farmers to poorer families. That quantity suffices for the work she can do now.

The dried and bundled jute is first hung from a pole and then beading starts. Ambiya makes the bottom first and then twines beads held in place with knots the size of a 25-paise coin. This is called “teha giro [coin knots]. It is where things settle after completing the beading process.”

As the craft is often made for brides and needs embellishments, the beads and knots are named after women’s ornaments. The first braid of jute, with some part wrapped in coloured thread, hanging from the teha giro, is called sitibati — the head ornament which sits in the central parting. Three beads wrapped in yellow, gold and green and resembling mustard crops cultivated on chars – gold for brides and green fields – forms a sitibati.

A sika generally has three sets of sitibatis from the beginning to the end. An aadarfana resembles a honeycomb in the shape of a bangle, a bullak is a nose ornament.

Villagers used these sikas for storing utensils, bedding, hand fans, fully grown vegetables such as ashgourd, bottlegourd, pumpkin and other vegetables that will be used for their seeds – hung from the ceiling and out of the reach of floods.

“We saw many floods and the gushing water eroding our land and home,” says her sister, Jabeda Khatun, now in her forties. The sisters recall how they had to keep moving. “Schools were not there, so we eventually stopped schooling and the same happens even today, that is why children are not literate in chars [floating islands].” The last recorded data on land loss due to flooding is over two decades old and says, “...char (riverine sand islands) areas cover 3.60 lakh hectares and house 24.90 lakh people in Assam. The state has lost 4.27 lakh hectares of land, 7.40 percent of its total land since 1950.”

“We don't go anywhere when floods come. Allah knows best when to take us away and when to keep us alive. We live here only,” says Ambiya, who continues to make sikas – relying on colourful strings and glitter from scrap or even the market.

“It takes a lot of labour, so I charge 400 to 500 rupees for one a sika,” Ambiya explains. She has 12 unsold sikas at her home in Barpeta where she lives with her husband Mahibur.

“Even if nobody buys them, I will keep making sikas and store my things, “she says firmly.