Colourful baskets hold hope for them
Expect profit this festival season to tide over hard time caused by pandemic
Hyderabad: The sight of colourful bamboo baskets produced by a group of weavers at Abdullahpurmet village in Hayathnagar Mandal en route to Ramoji Film City grabs attention of people. Once the festive season starts, this family of weavers gets busy making baskets, flowers and hanging pots among other crafts.
Divided into a few small groups, this family migrates to the city for about five months in a year to make a livelihood. They weave baskets of various sizes, shapes and designs. They get the material required, which costs them about Rs 600, from a village near Tirupati and transport it here. This group of weavers had been living here in makeshift huts for the past one and half a month, pinning hopes on Diwali.
The 60-year-old weaver, Rangamma, and her husband don’t even own a hut. At times locals help them with water. But there’s not a year that goes by that they don’t move to the city and work day and night to find their daily bread.
“I have been into basket weaving since my youth. During the festive season, especially Diwali and Dussehra, we travel from our native Piduguralla to Hyderabad, stay here for at least five months and sell a variety of handmade artifacts. We survive on this period’s earnings,” Rangamma says while picking up a long sliver of sliced bamboo and weaving it for a basket. Her husband sits in a corner, weaving the base.
Per day, the couple weaves as many as 20 baskets. But, at the end of the day, what they earn is hardly sufficient to make ends meet. Most of the time, despite waiting from dawn to dusk, they earn nothing.
The pandemic has worsened their situation. The material costs have increased and people are apparently no longer showing interest in buying woven materials. However, they continue to engage in this craft. “Our life is inseparable from this craft though we feel pain by continuously sitting in the same posture,” said another weaver.
Basket weaving is one of the oldest practices that displays the creativity and craftsmanship of weavers, who convert the raw materials into materials so beautiful and functional. The bamboo strands are cut and the skin of the plant is shaved. These strands are then weaved into a pattern. A wide variety of patterns can be made by changing the size and colour of a certain style of weave.
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