They are not magic carpets, but they are sheer magic. It took 900 skilled artisans in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi 10.80 lakh man hours to hand-knot 18 shades from the Indian agave-green family to make 158 carpets bearing seemingly unending motifs inspired by the plumes of the national bird, the peacock, for the Lok Sabha hall in the new Parliament building. For the new Rajya Sabha hall, 156 carpets bearing a motif inspired by the national flower, the lotus, were woven in shades of kokum red. The carpets were stitched together seamlessly on site in a semi-circle to form a single carpet that currently occupies a majestic new home, about 750 km away from its birthplace, at the new Parliament building. The new complex was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 28. Carpets like this one have been intricately hand-knotted for decades in the 'carpet city of India'. In 2009, these handmade carpets were awarded the coveted Geographical Indications tag, “a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to that origin”. At present, 188 manufacturers are authorised users of this tag. “Ye ekdum true vaala hai (It is the real thing),” confirms Mandeep Prajapati, his eyes lighting up as soon as he sees a photo of the carpet laid out in the new Lok Sabha hall. Sitting by a vertical loom inside a dark, unplastered room, the harsh sun beating down on the tin roof, Prajapati is hand knotting a carpet in 14 colours — varying shades of green, yellow, orange and brown — showing a deer bounding across a green and yellow background. One of the 900 weavers who spent months knotting the two carpets for the Upper and Lower Houses that are spread over 35,000 square feet, he recalls his confusion when he first saw the peacock motif for the Lok Sabha hall carpet, which has 120 knots per square foot. “It was unlike anything I had ever seen or worked on before. The design fanned out gradually. In the beginning, we could not make sense of how it would look after it was complete. It was only after we wove around two feet of the carpet that I began to visualise the final product,” said the 39-year-old. Obeetee, which won the tender to make carpets for both the Upper and Lower Houses, is the oldest surviving carpet manufacturer in the area. In 1920, it set up an office in Bariyaghat, in neighbouring Mirzapur. Currently, its head office is in Bhadohi’s Gopiganj, while weaving is done in small weaving sheds set up in nearby villages. The company started the Parliament project in 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. Bhadohi’s Parliament connection In a neighbourhood in Bhadohi’s Badi Bazaar, everyone had heard about the city's Parliament connection. “It is a matter of pride for us. Something made in small villages of Bhadohi is now gracing the floors of Parliament,” said 22-year-old Mohammad Shamsher, who works for a carpet manufacturer, adding that he saw glimpses of the ceremony and the carpets on TV. However, this is not Obeetee’s first brush with Delhi’s corridors of power. In the late 1980s, a hand-knotted carpet was commissioned by Rashtrapati Bhawan. When it was installed, President R Venkataraman called the weavers and company employees, along with then owner-cum-chairperson Edward Oakley, for tea at his official residence. The carpet is still laid out in the Ashoka Hall. “It has been the company’s policy since the beginning to take the work to the artisan instead of having them come to the factory. We work by supporting manufacturers, who have weaving sheds and weavers. However, they are free to take on other projects as well. These sheds are regularly inspected by the company staff. Majority of the work related to carpet making — weaving and binding — happens in these homes and sheds. The washing and finishing has been shifted to the manufacturing unit in recent years,” said Makarand Mehendale, the chief of operations at Obeetee. One such shed is owned by supporting manufacturer Gauri Shankar, 49, who has 100 looms in different sheds in Gopipur village. Eight of these looms are new and were built specifically for the Parliament project. “It was due to the size requirements of some pieces, one of which was 20 x 28 feet. Since we did not have a loom that big, we built a new one,” said Shankar, who started his shed in 1982 with a handful of workers. Today, he has around 100 people working for him. He said most weavers today are from Jharkhand’s Garhwa district or Sonbhadra region of Uttar Pradesh. In his Gopipur shed, most workers are from Garhwa, which is where Prajapati came from 10 years ago. “I started learning carpet knotting back in my village when I was just 12-13 years old. A lot of people there are engaged in making hand-knotted carpets, but they are all first-generation learners. My father is a farmer. We learnt this new skill because many others in the village were making money after they started weaving carpets. It was a good opportunity. For the first year, however, I was not allowed to touch the yarn. I had to learn how to set up the taana,” he recalled. The taana is the cotton thread stretched taut on a wooden loom. This thread forms the base of the carpet on which the yarn is knotted. There are two rows, with one thread directly behind the other. The weavers are provided with a design on a laminated sheet of paper, where each pixel denotes one pair of the taana. In the shed where Prajapati is knotting a carpet, three people working on a loom each have been given an identical laminated sheet showing the design. Hung on a wooden bar behind the rows of the taana, weavers refer to these sheets time and again to make sure they are following the design brief. “A single mistake means the final product is different from the design brief,” Prajapati says. In another loom in the complex, in a room similar to the one in which Prajapati works, Parikha Chaudhary, Rajinder Chaudhary and Munna Chaudhary, all from Jarhi village in Garhwa district, are working on an intricate 14 x 18 feet carpet with 280 knots per square feet for the company. “For 120 knots, a weaver will weave around 1 inch a day. For 280 knots, he will weave only a quarter of an inch a day. This piece will take nearly a year to complete…,” said Sudhir Rai, the production head at Obeetee. Plucking and pulling on the taana as he ties knots, snapping off the yarn once the knot is secure, Munna said he earns around Rs 350 per day working at Shankar’s production shed. The workers live on site, in small rooms built in a line next to the weaving sheds. “I came here to work nearly seven years ago. I wove in my village (in Jharkhand) before that, but it was not easy. In this line of work, concentration is key. With family and children, there are hundreds of distractions there. Despite that, there are responsibilities at home that need to be fulfilled. children’s homework, parents’ illnesses, etc. Here (in Bhadohi), I can concentrate. The kind of work and money we get here is also better,” said Munna, who visits his three children, wife and parents once every 3-4 months. According to Rai, the carpet that Munna is working on, given its high-level of complexity, could easily sell for around Rs 4.5 lakh per yard. After the weavers are done, the carpets are collected by company representatives for washing, drying and finishing. Some companies have units where yarn is dyed in different colours and hues. The workers also undergo annual colour blindness and hue tests to ensure they are able to recognise the subtlest of differences between two shades. While hand-knotted carpets of Bhadohi have caught public fancy, three other varieties — handwoven, hand-tufted and flat-woven (or dhurrie) — are also made there. Hand-knotted carpets are usually made for big manufacturers and exporters, and commissioned by institutions, while the smaller ones focus on the rest. Today, the industry has permeated nearly every home in the district, with women taking over the first task in the carpet-making process. Bhadohi, around 45 km from Varanasi and 82 km from Allahabad, is one of Uttar Pradesh's smaller districts. Earlier a part of Varanasi district, it was carved out as a separate district in 1994. According to the Uttar Pradesh government, the carpet industry in the Mirzapur-Bhadohi region engages nearly 32 lakh people and Bhadohi district alone employs 22 lakh rural artisans. The official website of Bhadohi district states, “Carpet weaving in the region dates back to the 16th century during the reign (of Mughal emperor) Akbar. The carpets of the region received the Geographical Indication tag, which means carpets manufactured in nine districts of the region, Bhadohi, Mirzapur, Varanasi, Ghazipur, Sonebhadra, Kaushambi, Allahabad, Jaunpur and Chandauli would be tagged with handmade carpet of Bhadohi.” However, it takes the entire country for a carpet to come together. Sheep wool for the carpets usually comes from Rajasthan and is processed in Haryana’s Panipat. While weavers belong to UP, Jharkhand and West Bengal, most exporters have offices in Delhi. For the Parliament carpets, however, the wool was imported from New Zealand. The arrival of carpet weaving to Bhadohi In Bhadohi’s Badi Bazaar, small 10 x 14 feet shops overflow with dyed and undyed yarn. These are bought by manufacturers, both big and small, and sent to houses, where women are paid between Rs 4 (for low-quality wool) and Rs 7 (for high-quality wool and silk threads) to untangle and roll them into balls inside the comfort of their home. Sitting on the threshold of her two-storey house in Badi Bazar, 30-year-old Sabina Begum is pulling the yarn apart from a hank with the help of a spinning wheel and rolling it into balls. She starts work around 10 am each day, after finishing all her household chores, and ends work by 6 pm. “I pull apart around 10 kg of yarn a day, usually earning Rs 70. I have done this since I was a child. My family was also involved in the same line of work, as is my husband and his family,” she said. Her father-in-law Ali Hasan weaves dhurries for a carpet exporter and is paid around Rs 250 per day. “One of my sons works as a carpenter. The other works for the same factory as I do. My youngest is in class 12. I don’t think he wants to work in the factory,” said Hasan, as his youngest, Imran, walked into the courtyard. All of 18, Imran said he will think about pursuing graduation after his schooling. But does he want to continue the family’s tradition? “Factory main nahi, apni export company lagaunga (I won't work in a factory. I will set up my own export firm),” he said. The balls of yarn that thousands of women in the area like Sabina make are sent to weavers, along with designs, to the looms or khaddi. In the narrow lanes of Badi Bazar, there is a khaddi at every 100 metres or so, installed by a contractor or small manufacturer. Most of them work on dhurries, earning around Rs 300 per day. Nearly 400 metres from Sabina’s house, Nadeem, Imran and Arshad are working in a khaddi on a 15 x 16 feet custom blue and white dhurrie for an exporter. They have been given a small swatch as a guide — the design will be repeated over and over till the dhurrie is completed within a week. Right across from the khaddi is the manufacturing unit of Ayra Collections, an export house that deals in handwoven and tufted carpets along with dhurries. Amr Hasan, 21, who did a bachelor's in business administration from Aligarh last year, recently joined the business started by his grandfather. Hasan's is among the few units where every step is carried out on company-owned premises. He employs around 150 workers but says work has been slower than usual over the past year. “The Ukraine war changed everything. Our biggest markets are Europe and America, but orders have started drying up. It all started after the war last year. Earlier, during Covid and the lockdown, we had orders but no workers. This time around, we have workers but there are no orders,” he said. He added, “In every house in Bhadohi, someone or the other is linked to carpet-making. It is the only job that people do here or come here to do.” According to the Carpet Export Promotion Council, established by the Ministry of Textiles, the total export value of handmade carpets and other floor coverings in 2021-22 was over Rs 16,640 crore. But how did the art of woven carpets reach Bhadohi? According to Obeetee’s Mehendale, the way carpets in Bhadohi are knotted is strikingly similar to the manner in which they are done in Persia. “Bhadohi falls on well-established trade routes. It is on the Silk Route and also has river access to Kolkata. There are two tales about how the art of carpet-weaving came to the area. The first is that traders from Persia, lugging their wares on the Silk Route, were caught in floods that were common in the area. At the time — this is during the Mughal reign — the main occupation in the area was farming. The second theory is that they were waylaid by bandits and decided to stay in the area till the time they could either earn enough money to return or get some help. The second theory seems more believable. But whatever it was, traders set up looms in the houses of farmers and taught them to weave. The craft received encouragement during Akbar’s reign,” he said. However, design preferences have changed drastically over the years. “Earlier, design was in quarters — aadhe ka aadhe. The design in one quarter of the carpet was repeated in the remaining three. Now, no part is the same as the other,” said Obeetee’s Rai. “Phool-patti ab nahi chalti (Floral designs don't work any more),” Prajapati chimed in. If he were to weave a carpet for his house, what would he make? “I would try to make the mor pankhi (peacock feather) design. Woh alag tha (It was different),” he said. But do Prajapati and Munna want their children to follow in their footsteps? “No,” both of them said emphatically. Turning around to pull a string of yarn from behind him and knotting it on the taana, Munna said, “It is back-breaking work. You have to sit in one place for ages. I want my son to become an engineer or doctor, perhaps even a babu (bureaucrat).”
