Sunday story: Stitch together, Kodihal revels in the warmth of the Kaudi

Illiterate or not, the women from the Gandali nomadic tribe let their fingers do the talking. Sitting in concentric circles, bound together by shared stories of the people they love - and hate - they make the famed Kaudi blankets that keep hundreds of people warm through the damp, biting winters of north Karnataka. The Kaudi quilted covers are stitched by hand, every piece taken from used clothes that are deftly pulled together at amazing speed, over gossip and folk songs.

There’s a fierce battle raging between women and machines in Kodihal village of Bagalkot, which could signal the end of a glorious tradition. Women of the Gandali community have been hand-stitching the beautiful Kaudi blankets for centuries using old clothes and selling them to keep the pot boiling in their households. The rude intrusion of blankets stitched on sewing machines using old saris, has sharply cut into their earnings and left them looking desperately for other means of livelihood.

Most of these women from the nomadic sect, are illiterate and used to sit for hours together stitching the blankets at an amazing speed while sharing the village gossip and singing folk songs.  Forty-six-year-old Anusavva Parge for instance earns Rs 6,000 per month stitching Kaudi, which is used more by the poor and middle classes. She roams around in rural areas to get orders from people who supply old clothes and saris needed to stitch the Kaudi. This is done using the right thumb and index finger-a skill not many can replicate.

The changing contours of blanket making have forced these women to shift to demeaning jobs to make both ends meet. They were self reliant once, now their occupation is facing extinction and there is little the women can do except watch other blankets push the native Kaudi out of the market.

"I stitch a minimum 3 Kaudis a week, it requires a lot of dedication and hard work. Each one of them fetches us Rs 300-350. But men from outside the community are selling blankets made using sewing machines at prices ranging from Rs 100 to Rs 150. They can do it in a few hours, we are facing tough competition. This has reduced the demand for our hand-stitched blankets to a great extent", says Nirmala Wastar.

Not all Kaudi customers have shifted to the new product. There are takers for hand-stitched quilts in rural areas as these traditional Kaudis are considered more durable and keep people warmer all because the women stitch them using thick and hard clothes. Many households prefer hand-stitched blankets with the products of sewing machines not giving enough warmth due to the use of waste cloth.

"I once supplied 15 hand-stitched Kaudis to a soldier. The armymen like it as it keeps them warm in icy cold areas like Siachen. What’s worrying is that the demand for Kaudis has dropped in the last one decade as the new generation prefers the latest blankets stitched using machines," says sixty-eight-year old Hanumavva Bhattar.

With the Kaudis not selling as they used to, many  Gandali women now work as housemaids or farm labourers for paltry wages. The older women have been rendered jobless and all they can do is stay indoors and ruminate over what went wrong with the once popular Kaudis.

The shift to an urban lifestyle has led to the disappearance of the warmth and affection, so reminiscent of rural ties. "Earlier, farmers in rural households used to provide food and grains to us when we supplied Kaudis to them. The younger lot knows nothing of these traditions and is cold and brusque when we approach them. I now work as a maid in 4-5 houses to run the family after the slump in demand for our blankets", explains Yallavva Sugate.

There is a sentimental value attached to these blankets as women used to hand over old saris used by their mothers and grannies for converting into Kaudis. There are some who confess that they feel like sleeping in the lap of their mums when they use these blankets. Now that the hand-stitched Kaudis are on the decline, all that they can do is look to the government for loans to make both ends meet. And help is not forthcoming leaving these women in dire straits.

An ancient occupation is set to disappear and may soon be driven into an obscure spot in some museum or handicraft centre to remind future generations that the magnificent hand-stitched Kaudi did once exist. But do these products, evolved  over a thousand years of painstaken thought and toil, deserve to be thrown into the dustbin of history? It’s a painful thought which the Gandali women of Kodihal will find hard to reconcile with.