“We made a silk shawl for Chinese president Xi Jinping, and it was presented to him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Chinese president's visit to the country in 2019,” says N Visalakshi, beaming with pride. It was probably this shawl that made the spotlight shine brighter on Sirumagai silks.
Sirumugai and Negamam house several private silk stores and handloom cooperative societies and sell varieties of silk and cotton saris in the Coimbatore district. Like Kancheepuram, it remains a sought-after destination for people in and around Coimbatore and from Kerala and Karnataka, purchasing saris for functions, especially marriages.
“Despite several designs arriving in the market often, both young and elderly women still like to wear Kodalikaruppur design silk saris, though they arrived in the market in 1991, says Visalakshi, the manager of Sirumugai Pudur Sri Ramalinga Sowdambigai Handloom Weavers Cooperative Society Limited.
Kodalikaruppur is a small village in Thanjavur district, and the temple designs from here are integrated in the silk saris of Sirumugai. “This design bagged a national award for our society,” she adds. With changing trends, the weavers are also incorporating new designs. “We are infusing updated trends like geometrical, raindrop, and flowers, etc., in soft silk and Kora cotton saris, which are preferred by office-goers as they are lightweight and comfortable for wearing throughout the day,” she says. Beyond this, for special occasions, like marriages, they also make saris with custom designs – of the couple, verses from a text, or any other story they would like to print.
Sharing some examples of the designs they have brought out so far, Visalakshi says, “We have also developed a sari with 1,330 couplets. We have an exclusive designer, and based on the trend prevailing in the market, we update our designs every four to five months. We have also developed a sari with Brahmi scripts representing the development of Tamil vowels from the Third century to the 20th century. Though we made the sari to submit for a national award, we are getting orders from customers for the same.”
There are 18 cooperative societies in Sirumugai, and they send their saris to Co-Optex. The saris in the society range from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000. There are also over 200 private stores in Sirumugai and Negamam.
A walk down the streets of Sirumugai will take you through the history of the weaving community. What was once a thriving society now has only a handful of weavers. With new opportunities aplenty, the younger generation has opted for other jobs.
N Sivakumar, manager of Sirumugai Pudur Devanga Handloom Weaver’s Cooperative Society Limited, tells The New Indian Express that only the older weavers are engaged in handloom weaving, and their children are earning in lakhs. They are not satisfied with a monthly salary of Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 in handloom weaving.
Sivakumar rues that the demand for Sirumugai saris has come down since customers find the products costly. Yet, the ones who do purchase this variant prefer designs like the Ashoka Chakra, elephant, and horse and birds.
“Earlier, one kilo of silk was sold at Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,500, and now it is doubled and selling at Rs 6,000 to Rs 6,500. That has led to the high price of saris. But people are keen on buying them,” he says.
While the stories differ from one society to another, textile owners find the business thriving, especially the Negamam cotton. NK Nachimuthu, one of the owners of Lakshmi Textiles at Negamam, tells The New Indian Express, “We get wholesale buyers from across the country, like Odisha, Cuttack, Bihar, and Kolkata. In the past few years, we have been getting a lot of orders from the gulf countries due to the increasing demand for Negamam pure cotton, which ranges from Rs 400 to a maximum of Rs 6,500.”
Having been in the business for three generations, Nachimuthu is glad about the rise in demand. “We were happy after the central government had issued a GI tag for Negamam cotton saris that led customers to make a beeline for the saris in our shops, hence increasing our sales,” he says.