We’ve seen weaving motifs depicting flowers and birds, even gods and goddesses, but a sari inspired by milkmaids? Made exclusively in the small town of Siddipet, some 100 km north of Hyderabad, gollabhama, literally meaning milkmaid, is a one-of-a-kind sari depicting the womenfolk of the pastoral Golla or Yadava community of rural Telangana. The women carrying a milk pot on their heads along with a bowl of curd in one hand, while distributing it from house to house, served as an inspiration for weavers who made it their motif.
Like all handloom, however, this special weave too became a casualty to power looms, and all but disappeared. It is said that in the 1960s, there were close to 2,000 weavers and hundreds of looms in Siddipet, but with the advent of power looms, the numbers drastically dropped till the craft reached its nadir in the early 2000s. Thanks to concerted efforts towards revival though, especially by weaver-centric non-profits, gollabhama saris have seen a steady comeback in the last decade. Added to that is the fact that UNESCO has accorded it the GI tag, something that has gone a long way in re-popularising this craft.
Among those attempting to revive the weave is Sunanda R Kalakannavar, a textile and fashion designer, who received sponsorship from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, for the project. “These saris piqued my curiosity when I was working as a textile designer for the Dubbaka cluster in Telangana around 2009-2010. Our team was instrumental in refining and redesigning the gollabhama motif so that it could be easily replicated on fabric,” she says.
As part of her post-doctoral fellowship, Kalakannavar, in 2016, conducted in-depth research on using advanced technology to make gollabhama saris a viable product in the market, while still maintaining its natural dyes. “With the traditional jala weaving technique, making one saree would take five-six days, but now with the jacquard loom, production time is down to three days,” she adds.
The weaving of the gollabhama sari is done by meticulously passing multiple coloured threads through the warp to get a clear design. According to master weaver Kailasham, 62, of Adarsha Handloom Weavers’ Cooperative Society in Siddipet, creating a gollabhama weave is a laborious process that takes prolonged hours of manual labour. “It takes over eight hours of work each day, something I have been doing for over 40 years now,” he says.
While most sell their ware through such cooperatives, younger weavers are getting more tech-savvy and using social media to sell their products directly as well.