Anjani Sanga

Student Reporter

Aakanksha

Editors

Swadesha Sharma

large_01-IMG-481-Crop-AS.jpg

medium_01-IMG-481-Crop-AS.jpg

small_01-IMG-481-Crop-AS.jpg

thumbnail_01-IMG-481-Crop-AS.jpg

01-IMG-481-Crop-AS.jpg

It is impossible to find mistakes in Jolen Sanga’s work.Identifying where the patterns on her handwoven chatais (mats) begin and end is a difficult task – all four sides of the chatai look alike. A single mistake while weaving might lay waste to a month of hard work. So the 66-year-old makes no mistakes. Her hands are now used to the work, and she can even weave while talking to people.Jolen and her late husband Yakub had two sons and four daughters. Her eldest son moved away in 2001. Then, in a series of misfortunes, Yakub, her daughters Rahil and Nilmani, and her son Silas passed away between 2004 and 2010.“My heart broke from all the deaths in my family. I didn’t know what to do,” says Jolen. “There was no way to run the household, so I started making mats.” Chalangi village in Jharkhand has a population of 1,221 people (Census 2011) and Jolen is the  only chatai weaver in her village. She has woven more than 25 mats since she started as a young girl. “This work [weaving] might look difficult but it is quite easy to learn,” she says. She picked it up by observing women in the neighbourhood. “I had the skills since childhood, but I only started using them because of a shortage of money.”

She studied till Class 7. “In my time education was not given much importance. Going to school was considered a waste of time.” Her monthly earnings come from selling woven mats, farming and working as a daily wage labourer.“Working in the fields is easier than weaving chatais,” she says. She adds that while agricultural labour happens only in the monsoon and daily wage work goes on from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., weaving a single chatai can take anywhere from 40 to 60 days depending on its size. Jolen says the continuous work in one position brings on a backache bad enough to bring tears to her eyes.Jolen and her two daughters – Elisaba, 36 and Binita, 24 – are members of the Munda community, listed as Scheduled Tribe. They live in Jharkhand’s Khunti district.

The process of weaving a chatai begins with collecting and drying date palm fronds in the sun. The leaves can be bought in the market but Jolen finds them too expensive; she prefers collecting them herself. She selects the fronds according to the size of the mat she plans to weave. The leaves of the fronds, separated from the stems, are then soaked in water. After this they are ready for weaving.Jolen begins by weaving a long strip about as wide as the palm of her hand. The slender leaves are braided under and over each other into a complex repeating pattern. She is careful in avoiding mistakes and keeps the weave tight – a loose weave ruins the pattern of the mat.Once the strip is ready, she measures and cuts it depending on the length of the mat to be woven. The cut pieces are laid side by side, waiting to be stitched together. For this, Jolen uses a thick needle that costs her Rs. 10, and a spool of plastic thread worth Rs. 40, both bought from a chowk [market] two kilometres from her village. “Earlier, I used to buy the same string for ten and the needle for five rupees,” she complains.Stitching is easier and quicker than weaving. If done continuously, an entire mat can be stitched in two days. A newly woven chatai weighs more than five kilos. Its weight reduces upon use.

To be used in any season, the thickness of this date palm mat makes it better than its plastic counterparts, especially during the winter months. A chatai like this might last more than five years – longer if kept away from water.“I have been using this chatai for the last seven years and I will use it for some more. It hasn’t torn anywhere,” says Jolen, pointing to an old mat in her house. “I keep it away from water and look after it like a child.”

“My mother loves making chatais. Whenever she is free, she starts weaving,” says Elisaba, Jolen’s elder daughter. Elisaba has not learnt weaving from her mother, but she helps her in preparing the palm fronds, cutting the woven strips and stitching the mat.Jolen’s younger daughter Binita has polio and is unable to walk on her own. “We don’t have enough money to afford a good hospital. She is being treated in a government hospital. We get medicines every month and have massages done.”

Daily wage agricultural labour brought in just Rs. 100 for eight hours of work. Now that she owns a piece of land, she grows her own food. Jolen also receives Rs. 1,000 per month under the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme. Her daughter Binita also gets Rs. 1,000 each month under the Swami Vivekananda Nishakt Swawalamban Protsahan Yojana. “When my entire family was around, we would all work in the stone quarries. Even returning home tired, we would laugh and joke around,” recalls Jolen. “Back then it was easy to buy everything we needed.”

“I used to weave under the shade of a tree,” says Jolen, sitting on the verandah of her house. The verandah, which she built with her own money, is now her chosen place of work and an occasional gathering place for her neighbours.She says that some twenty years ago, people from the village would gather during the summer (February to June) and weave together. This would also give women a chance to talk and share their joys and sorrows. Chatais made from date palm leaves would sell for Rs. 600-650 then.Today, the mats Jolen weaves are priced between Rs. 1,200 to Rs. 2,500 depending on their size. These are low returns considering the time and the physical effort that goes into making them. However, people these days prefer buying plastic chatais – they are cheaper (priced from Rs. 100), lighter and colourful.

Jolen says, earlier one could find a woven mat in every house in the village but now you can see them only in the houses of the Adivasi communities. This is because of a tradition in which a woman getting married is presented with a newly woven chatai to carry to her new house. The woven mat is slowly disappearing, adds Jolen and perhaps in a few years, chatai weavers will only be people of the past.Our thanks to Parveen Kumar and Amrita Rajput, former PARI interns who helped with this piece, and Dhyanvi Katharani, former PARI intern who helped in the English translation.

Chalangi’s skilled chatai weaver

چلانگی کی ہنرمند چٹائی بُنکر

சலங்கியின் திறன்மிகு பாய் தயாரிப்பாளர்

ಚಾಲಂಗಿಯ ನುರಿತ ಚಾಪೆ ಹೆಣೆಯುವವರು

চলাঙ্গির সুদক্ষ চাটাই শিল্পী জোলেন সাঙ্গা

चलांगी की हुनरमंद चटाई बुनकर

Chalangi

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


हमारी दुनिया की झलक

पारी पर आपका स्वागत है

पाठकों के लिए हमारा सभी कॉन्टेंट मुफ़्त उपलब्ध है. अगर आपको हमारा काम पसंद है, तो आप हमारे लिए वालंटियर कर सकते हैं या हमारी आर्थिक मदद कर सकते हैं, ताकि हम अपना काम जारी रख सकें.

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>

Chalangi’s skilled chatai weaver

Jolen Sanga weaves and stiches seamless mats with date palm leaves. A Munda Adivasi from Jharkhand, she is a single parent and agricultural worker

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