Along the Majuli silk route

Deepika Kaman’s trained eye can distinguish between the almost identical looking male and female moths. “They look alike, but one is longer than the other. That is the male,” she says, pointing to the  brown and beige creatures with a wingspan of around 13 centimetres. “The short, thicker one is the female.”

Deepika is a resident of Borun Chitadar Chuk village in Assam’s Majuli district and she started rearing eri silkmoths (Samia ricini) some three years ago. She learnt it from her mother and grandmother.

Eri is a silk cultivated in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam and neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland. The Mising (also spelt Mishing) community has traditionally reared the silkworms and woven eri cloth for their own use, but silk weaving for commercial sale is a relatively new practice in the community.

“Times have changed now,” says 28-year-old Deepika. “These days even young girls learn and practice silkworm rearing.”

To start rearing silkworms, people can either procure eggs from the Department of Sericulture in Majuli – which can cost around Rs. 400 a packet for some varieties – or get them from people in the village who are already engaged in the occupation. Deepika and her husband Udai usually do the latter since they get them for free. The couple do not keep more than three pairs of moths at a time since it means acquiring more era paat (castor leaves) to feed the hatched larvae. Since they do not have an era bari (plantation), they must forage for the leaves.

“It’s a lot of work. It [castor leaves] can’t be cultivated on small patches of land. We would have to build a bamboo fence and ensure that the goats don’t plunder it,” she adds. 

The caterpillars are hearty eaters and it soon becomes difficult to source enough era leaves for them. “We even have to wake up and feed them at night. The more they eat, the more silk they produce.” Udai also mentions that they eat keseru (Heteropanax fragrans). But it’s one or the other: “They eat only one specific leaf in their lifetime excluding all others.”

When they are ready to cocoon themselves, the poka polu (caterpillars) start crawling around looking for suitable places. They are kept on banana leaves and hay to await the transformation. “Once they start making the threads, they are visible only for the next two days or so. After that they disappear within the cocoon,” says Deepika.

The process of extracting silk fibres begins around 10 days after the start of the cocooning process. “If we keep them any longer than that, the caterpillar turns into a moth and flies away,” says Deepika.

There are two ways of harvesting the silk: either wait till the metamorphosis is complete and the moth flies away leaving behind the fibres, or the traditional Mising practice which involves boiling the cocoon.

Deepika says it is difficult to extract the fibre by hand unless the cocoon is boiled. It is quick to rot when the moth emerges. “While boiling, we keep checking them to see if they have softened up,” adds Udai. “It takes around half an hour over a fire.”

The polu poka (caterpillar) is a delicacy, eaten after its extraction from the boiled cocoon. “It tastes like meat,” says Deepika. “It can be fried or eaten as patot diya [a dish where any vegetable, meat or fish is wrapped in banana leaf and smoked in the hearth].”

The extracted fibres are washed, wrapped in a cloth and dried in the shade. The threads are then spun using a takuri or popy (a spindle). “It takes three to four days to make 250 grams of eri thread,” says Deepika who spins the thread after her daily household work is done. A traditional sador-mekhela (a two-piece dress) requires almost a kilogram of yarn.

The threads are white when first spun, but later, repeated washes turn them the distinctive yellowish colour of eri.

“A metre of eri silk can be woven in a day if we start working in the morning and keep at it throughout the day,” she adds. 

The silk threads are also woven mixed with cotton thread. Deepika says the cloth is used in making shirts, saris and traditional dresses worn by the Assamese women. Saris are also being made with eri, a new trend. 

Despite new trends, maintaining a silk business is a lot of hard work. “It takes a lot of time to rear silkworms and then weave clothes,” says Deepika, who has taken a break from silk cultivation. With household chores, seasonal agricultural work and raising her four-year-old son, there is simply no time for it.

Jamini Payeng is a master weaver in her forties and is recognised by the Crafts Council of India. She has been weaving eri silk cloth for about a decade and is concerned about the waning interest in the craft. “These days, there are people among us who have never touched the loom. They can’t distinguish what is real eri. It has come to this.”

While in Class 10, Jamini took a course on textiles and weaving. She practised for a couple of years before quitting to join college. After graduation, she joined a non-governmental organisation and began visiting villages in Majuli to observe traditional silk weaving. 

“In the households where eri is reared, the children learn from their mothers,” says Jamini who is from Majuli. “I was not taught to do taat-bati [weave] or to spin a bobbin. I learned watching my mother do it.”

She says most women were still wearing silk clothes they had made on their handloom, since casual machine-made clothes were not as abundantly available as they are today. Women dressed in sador-mekhela made of eri, nooni and muga silk. “The women would carry their takuri [spindle] everywhere they went.”

Jamini was inspired. “I decided then that I will rear eri silkworms and teach other people how to do the same.” Currently, she trains about 25 women from Majuli in weaving and textiles. Her work is exhibited within the country and outside, including a piece in the British Museum.

"The demand for eri clothes is high, but we make it using traditional methods," says Jamini. Elsewhere, eri cloth is also woven on machines; and silk from Bhagalpur in Bihar floods markets in Assam.

For handmade items the price depends on the kinds of threads and techniques used as well as the intricacy of design. A handwoven eri stole with traditional designs can go for more than Rs. 3,500. The market price for a handwoven sador-mekhela starts around Rs. 8,000 and can go up to Rs. 15,000 to 20,000 in the local market.

“Earlier, Assamese girls used to weave gamusa, rumal and pillow covers for their lovers and our Mising girls also wove galuk,” she says. Jamini believes if people don’t revive the traditional methods and pass them on to the next generation, this rich cultural heritage will disappear. “That’s why I have been doing it more or less however I can, taking it as a responsibility.”