The looms fall silent in Bhinrari

“When I was young, we never thought we would stop.”

The dust covered tools abandoned in the loft of Radha Devi’s home, however, tell a different story. A spinning wheel and an aged wooden shuttle, implements that accompanied her through decades of weaving blankets made with natural wool and never dyed, now lie silent.

“Suta banawat ke kala hamar haath se chhutat jaata [The skill of spinning thread is slipping from my hands],” says the spinner and weaver from Bhojpur. “I haven’t woven a blanket since that one [in 2016].” The one she points to is thick and woven in shades of brown, with stripes running across.

“I have been making these since I was very young, with my mai [mother], chachi [aunt] and dadi [grandmother],” adds the elderly weaver who does not remember her exact age but can tell you this much: “I have seen the times of Indira Gandhi!”

In the lanes of Bhinrari village of Garhani block, sheep wool once had its own rhythm. In winter markets, blankets woven by Pal artisans moved from hand to hand, their coarse fibres keeping people warm through long cold nights. Today, those markets are quieter and Radha Devi is the last woman from her community in the village to have woven such blankets.

“Ehi jaat ba hamar [This is our caste],” says Radha Devi. “This is what we’ve done from the beginning.”

Draped in a green and pink saree, Radha Devi stands against the sun-warmed brick wall of her house recalling how she learned to weave when she was eight or nine years old. She never went to school and learned the craft from her mother. Her father and grandfather kept more than a hundred sheep. Typically, women in the family wove blankets and sweaters from the wool, while the men sold them in nearby villages or even other districts. She saw the same pattern after marriage – her husband and father-in-law kept sheep, and her mother-in-law wove blankets.

Around 40-45 families from the Pal community, classified as an Other Backward Class in Bihar, have lived in this village for a long time. The caste system meant that generation after generation, each family was bound to practice the same occupation.

Men grazed sheep in groups of four or five, moving along the riverside in search of fresh grass. They would carry grain, utensils, small tents, bicycles and some basic supplies, camping with their herds for one to two months.

“Every family would typically raise around 100-150 sheep, collect their wool and weave blankets from it,” says Radha Devi. Women gathered together to weave, crafting blankets with different patterns and designs.

The work followed a seasonal rhythm – wool collection during the monsoon, spinning in autumn and weaving through winter. Sheep meant livelihood, identity and community standing.

“One double-sized blanket used to sell for at least 1,000-1,200 [rupees].” Until around 15 years ago she would weave seven to ten blankets a year. “We sold several in the beginning,” her son Rakesh says, recalling selling hand-woven blankets on a bicycle with his father. “Then we sold fewer and fewer.” Machine made blankets priced at half of these, slowly replaced hand-made ones in the market – cheaper, softer and more colourful. Even they have switched to using them.

The fall in demand for blankets is matched by the fall in availability of wool. “There used to be a lot of open land for grazing,” Rakesh says. “Now fields are fenced and roads have come up – it has become difficult to move with the flock.” Such changes chip away at an already vulnerable occupation where one bad season or one accident can erase a year’s worth of earnings.

“People used to be accommodating about letting us graze animals on farms,” says Rakesh’s cousin Dharmendra. “Now people argue.” He recalls an accident near a railway station when a train ran over and killed around 100 of their sheep. “It was a huge loss and we got no help.” With uncertainties like these rising, more and more men in the community began migrating out of Bihar for wage labour. Dharmendra’s own son now works in Delhi and returns only during Diwali and Chhath.

Rakesh took on his father’s work after his death some years ago from heat stroke while out grazing sheep. But he along with his wife Nilam, who works as an agricultural labourer, keep only 30-40 animals. Their son Sunil and daughter-in-law Reena run a small general store in the village, whose school-going son will not be taking up herding either.

Today the family depend on their shop, milk sales from their two cows, wage labour and occasional sheep sales to butchers for Rs. 2,500-3,000 each animal.

Radha Devi shows this reporter a folded blanket, the last she ever made for herself. She began weaving it around 2012 and finished it in 2016, working slowly as age made her hands tremble. She had taken it up simply to keep herself occupied.

Her son had sheared the wool, washed it in the river and dried it in the sun. Her daughter-in-law had softened it with a stick. And Radha Devi had spun the yarn on their old wooden spinning wheel.

The blanket now sits folded in a corner, with only memories of sheep bells that no longer ring, and spindles that no longer turn.