The other side of empowerment

Soon after I started my craft workshop-cum-studio way back in 2003 in Santiniketan, I realised that for the famous kantha embroidery of this region, the Muslim girls were streets ahead of their Hindu counterparts.

While for the Hindu girls, it is an acquired skill to help them earn a living, for the Muslim girls, embroidery is a way of life. A skill they learn from their childhood and practice till their eyesight permits. So the passion they bring to their craft and their engagement with its intricacies are of a very different order.

After I tasted success with my first Muslim recruit, it was easy enough to get more. Birbhum, the district where Santiniketan is located, has a Muslim population of 37 per cent, mostly poor and mostly skilled. Hence, in our embroidery unit, the numbers tilted in favour of Muslim women.

When the Muslim recruits initially started work, their faces were hidden by their dupattas or sari pallus. They came to work riding their own bicycles or sometimes were dropped by their fathers/husbands. Their clothes were usually more loud and typically more of synthetic fabric than their Hindu colleagues.

But these girls were fast learners and after a few months, their dupattas became less restrictive and apparel less loud. Soon, visitors to the workshop could not make out the difference between the Hindu girls and their Muslim colleagues. Later, the girls abandoned bicycles and bought scooters. When they drive in to the workshop gate on their scooters and wraparound sunglasses, it is difficult to imagine the meek reticent girls they once were.

But as they make more money, thanks to their salaries and commissions they earn by getting work done by their friends and family in their villages, they often acquire new men friends. Since most of them are married, the entire affair is conducted during their working hours. I personally hate CCTV cameras, and have no way of knowing exactly how much time is spent on the phone when I am not in the workshop but from hearsay, I know that it is a fair bit.

I had learnt to ignore all this thinking I work with adults and what they choose to do in their personal lives cannot be my concern. Till one day, the son of one of the ladies working with me came to the workshop and asked me to sack his mother because their family does not want her to come to work anymore.

I pointed out to the young lad that his mother had committed no offence at work and so there was no question of my ‘sacking’ her. If they did not wish her to continue to work, they would have to stop her.

The next day, the lady did not come to work and I was told that she had rushed her son to a hospital in Burdwan as he had drunk rat poison to kill himself apparently angry and dejected at my refusal. The lady’s husband had told my other colleagues that if anything were to happen to their son he would “blow me up with a bomb”. I laughed when I heard this but secretly prayed for the son’s recovery because thanks to the current state of West Bengal politics, bombs are easy to access in Birbhum district. Thankfully, the son recovered after a stomach wash and I live to tell the tale.

A few days later, the real reason for his anger became public. The son had managed to unlock his mother’s phone and seen pictures of his mother with a man who was not his father.