The biting winter wind in Shillong will make even Anton Chekhov rethink his lines, “People do not notice whether it’s winter or summer when they are happy.”
You cannot ignore the cold here and need to be prepared for the worst. You also cannot ignore the quilt makers who come to the city from Bihar before every winter. They roam around localities with their unique instrument that many jokingly called “guitar”. The sound of the “guitar”, which the quilt makers called dhanush (bow), announces that help is in hand.
Most of the quilt makers in Shillong are Muslims from Bihar and have been visiting the hill city for more than five decades now. Asgar Ali, who came here from Chhapra about 50 years ago, says all his relatives were in Shillong and his father thought it would be best to come here instead of going to Kolkata.
Ali lives with other quilt makers at Dhobighat in Jhalupara. There are three or four of them in the area and all are from Chhapra.
The 60-year-old man slouches a little as he walks into the wood and tin room shared by at least five persons. A wooden bed, a table at one corner that is used as a makeshift kitchen and two plastic chairs are the only furniture in the dimly lit room without ventilation.
Ali does not sit when offered a chair and instead asks his “guest” to take one and feel comfortable and warm up with a cup of milk tea. Warmth is what he sells in winter. The old quilt maker says, albeit nonchalantly, that he has no savings because whatever little he earns is spent on food and rent.
“My family is in Bihar and they work as labourers in fields. They earn in kind like vegetables and rice. We do not have any land,” he says with a smile.
Talking about the problems, Ali plays it down saying they are part of life. “We all have problems but we try to adjust.”
Nazmuddin, another quilt maker in his late thirties who came here in 1996 with his father, nods in agreement. He says their problems are aggravated by the poor market for hand-made quilts and mattresses. “The market is flooded with Kurlon mattresses and silk quilts. People nowadays go for those things and hardly summon us,” he informs.
The demand for these quilts has gone down drastically and only four or five orders come their way in a week, informs Ali who waits for customers in front of Bhagwan Das Textiles in Police Bazar everyday.
A worker at Bhagwan Das says the shop takes orders from customers and engages the quilt makers but does not employ them directly. The shop gets around 15 orders a week, “which is less than what it was 30 years back”.
Both Ali, who has four children, and Nazmuddin, who has five, never thought of bringing their families to Shillong, which has remained their “workplace” and will never become home.
There are quilt makers from different districts of Bihar, besides Chhapra. Most of them work as migratory labourers and after the winter they take up other manual jobs.
Another group of quilt makers who stays in Barapathar admits that things are not well these days. Sher Mohammad has been making quilts for the last 50 years. The 68-year-old man finds it amusing that someone would be interested in writing about them and he talks with a smile on his face. He also agrees to show the “dhanush” in his dingy room under a staircase that he shares with three others.
The dhanush, says the elderly quilt maker, is made only in Bihar and costs around Rs 1200. “Even if we have to mend it we have to go to Bihar because there is no one in Shillong or other parts of Meghalaya and Assam,” Ali concedes.
Talking about health hazards, Ali says they usually use masks or cover their faces while beating the cotton into soft pulp. “Otherwise there is always a chance to catch cold and cough,” he adds.
Many quilt makers also work for shops in Bara Bazar and use the rooftops of the shops as their workstation.
Fajle Karim, whose 40-year-old shop sells hand-made quilts and mattresses and raw materials like cotton and cloth, says there are four to five experts who make quilt for his shop. “We sell readymade stuff as well as take orders. Customers can also buy raw materials,” he informs.
The price of cotton varies as per quality. While the best “Karpas tula”, or Gossypium herbacium L., can be bought for Rs 250 a kg, the low quality ones can be obtained for as low as Rs 60 a kg.
The generous shop owner shows the way to the rooftop where his workers make quilts. The steep staircase followed by a wobbly ladder leads to the open terrace where three workers were already finishing the day’s job. Md Aslam, who is in his sixties, says a worker takes around three hours to complete a double-bed mattress or quilt and is paid Rs 50-80 apiece. To make a double-bed mattress or quilt, one has to shell out around Rs 2,000.
“It is less than a Kurlon mattress but people still go for the latter. They don’t understand that a mattress made from fine cotton can be helpful in reducing back pain and other orthopaedic problems. Similarly, a good quality hand-made quilt is warmer than any fancy products,” says Nazmuddin with palpable frustration in his voice.
But time changes preference and soon these quilt makers will vanish in oblivion. This is a fact that even this hapless group of workers is aware of and so none of them want their children to join the profession that hardly has any warmth left in it.
~ NM
