When Madras Checks meet African memory: inside the Siddi women’s kavand quilt tradition

Hanaphabi and Saidambi Naik, two middle-aged women from the Kalaghatgi taluk in Karnataka’s Dharwad district, were restless at first to speak in front of a camera. A few whisper-filled moments later, Saidambi took the lead in telling their story of stitching memory.

“We are both from the Siddi community in north Karnataka but our origins are in Sindh, Pakistan and parts of Africa. We have left our village to come to Chennai to show our kavands (quilts),” Saidambi says in the Siddi dialect, which has a mix of words borrowed from Konkani, Marathi, Kannada, Urdu and Hindi.

The two women rarely get the chance to leave their village because the community tends to distrust outsiders. Bearing distinctly African features, the Siddis have been historically discriminated against by colonisers and locals alike. “We sometimes travel to our relatives’ houses close to our villages but otherwise, we just work in the fields and stitch the quilts,” says Hanaphabi.

Since 2015-16, as their quilts started to be recognised as crafts, Siddi women have been slowly venturing outside their villages to showcase their craft. Leading the way is art historian and community practitioner Anitha N. Reddy, who has been working with the community, across 15-20 villages. Reddy first saw a kavand at a friend’s home in the Western Ghats, 15 years ago. “During a trip to a Siddi village, I had given away a bunch of my clothes to my friend’s family. The next time I arrived, I was admiring a quilt that my friend’s wife had stitched. She pointed to the blanket, showing me scraps of my clothes which had made it to the piece. It was amusing but also captivating,” she says.

That set Reddy on a journey of understanding the quilt. Elaborating on the significance of the kavand, Saidambi says, “The most ornate quilts are reserved for marriages. It is an heirloom passed on to our daughters. If you do not take a quilt to your in-laws’ house, you might not be treated well. You will also not have a sheet to cover yourself with in the winter. We also make quilts for our newborns.”

The art exhibition ‘Threads of Confluence’ was held at DakshinaChitra Museum in Chennai last month.
| Photo Credit:
B. Jothi Ramalingam

In December, the duo, along with 20 others, came to Chennai’s DakshinaChitra museum to display 50 colourful, tiled quilts as a part of Threads of Confluence, a travelling exhibit. For the first time, the Siddi women, made use of Madras Checks, a distinct cloth from the erstwhile Madras Presidency, in their hand-stitched kavands. Madras Checks have been exported the world over since the 16th century.

No two kavands ever look similar. One can find Roman alphabets like ‘A’, ‘E’ and ‘H’ as a part of the mix. “To the Siddis, it is merely a design,” says Reddy. What was once a tool for survival is now an art, and a potential livelihood.

Meeting of two worlds

Bringing the Siddi quilters’ craft and Madras Checks fabric together was the brainchild of Anitha Pottamkulam, director (culture), DakshinaChitra, who roped in Reddy, and the manufacturers of the cloth, Old Madras Trading Company (OMTC).

Although the Madras Checks and the Siddis do not overlap in history, there’s a metaphorical connection. If the Siddis were brought to India from Africa, the Madras Checks travelled to the Caribbean from India via the colonial trade route of the Coromandel Coast. Now a premium fabric, this peasant/fisherman clothing from 12th century Madraspatnam village (later Madras/Chennai), left the shores of a colonised India centuries later, and became popular in 1960s America.

“When Anitha [Pottamkulam] and I spoke about this exhibit coming to Chennai, we realised that we’d like to incorporate an element from the city. The vibrant Madras Checks, a fabric with rich history, was our cloth of choice. It has a long history of export from South India to many parts of the world, and is especially viewed as a symbol of prestige in the African nations,” says Reddy.

One can find Roman alphabets like ‘A’, ‘E’ and ‘H’ as part of the design mix of a kavand quilt.
| Photo Credit:
B. Jothi Ramalingam

Before it went to the Caribbean and became a part of national costume, Madras Checks went to Africa. Reddy adds, the Real Madras Handkerchief was known as injiri meaning ‘real India’ and was used by the Nigerian Kalabari tribe to wrap babies.

Rising from scraps

For the exhibit, OMTC provided the fabric. Its co-founder Ranvir Shah, who is in the pursuit of reviving original hand-woven handloom Madras fabric, now owns these 55 quilts. Until now, the leftover garment-fabric bits were used for making stuffed toys. This time, the scraps were cut up and used to create eclectic, tetris-like patterns by Siddi women. At their Chennai factory, the fabric-weavers and the Siddi quilters interacted through songs in their mother tongues, in the absence of a common language.

At the OMTC Chennai factory, the Tamil fabric-weavers and the Siddi quilters interacted through songs.
| Photo Credit:
B. Jothi Ramalingam

The historically poor Siddis, with only some assigned the Scheduled Tribe status, have struggled to build a life outside of their economic constraints. The aim is survival. “The main intention for them to come to Chennai was to understand their history with the materiality,” Reddy says. 

Saidambi Naik (left) and Hanaphabi, Siddi quilters from north Karnataka travelled to Chennai, for the first time in their lives, they are travelling outside their village to showcase their craft.
| Photo Credit:
B. Jothi Ramalingam

Both Shah and Reddy are keen on putting this quilting tradition from South India on the global map. While Shah is selling and exhibiting the kavind quilts made using their Madras Checks, Reddy is separately doing other shows with these Siddi quilters, which are not associated with OMTC. She says, “Some women have travelled in India to similar exhibits, and teach other art practitioners their quilting style. It has made them value themselves more.” She hopes to take a handful of Siddi women and their quilts to The International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, U.S. Currently, the exhibit is at Kadari Art Gallery, Telangana, till February 19.

The most ornate quilts are reserved for marriages; an heirloom passed on to daughters; quilts are made for newborns, too.
| Photo Credit:
B. Jothi Ramalingam

 The kavand quilt exhibit is currently at Kadari Art Gallery, Telangana, till February 19.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

No two kavands ever look similar.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Despite the fact that many of them are earning through the craft, Hanaphabi and Saidambi are “not sure how this is going to solve their bigger problems” of excessive rains and severe flooding and landslides uprooting homes and lives. A lesson from these women is their resilience as they find joy in learning the art of stitching.

For details about the travelling exhibit, follow @anithanreddy on Instagram

sanjana.g@thehindu.co.in