January 13, 2025

Becoming Weavers

Eager to stretch our legs after the morning’s movie screening and a welcome pizza lunch, a few of us opt to walk to our next destination. We pick our way through the crowds of MG Road until the bustling fades and we turn onto a quiet side street. It is not the destination I was expecting. We file through the gate of an earthy red house surrounded by plants and are greeted by the mother-son duo who run the Vimor Museum of Living Textiles.
Inside, beautiful sarees adorned with intricate zari (gold thread) motifs catch my eye. A loom with a sarong in progress stands on a platform above us as we gather to hear our guides. The good-hearted mother-son arguing that ensues reinforces that this is not a museum of just dioramas and display cases. It is a multi-generational project born out of passion to revive the wonders of Indian textiles. Vimor is both a brand and a foundation which encourages and empowers local weavers to produce heritage designs that often require techniques that would otherwise be lost to history.
The scale of that ambition quickly becomes apparent as the son, Arup, walks us through drawers filled with unique sarees. One depicts elephants, tigers, and eagles: animals with desirable qualities to be imbued into the wearer. Another takes inspiration from the Middle East depicting mosques and dhows and dates. Together the sarees illustrate India’s layered history. The weavers who made these pieces long ago, and those that carry on their legacy, are true artisans. Immense care and mastery is apparent in every work. Weeks spent at the loom, picking through thousands of threads, yield masterpieces.
It strikes me that our group can learn from these artisans. Though we may be mainly engineers working on problems from water resources to prosthetics, the weaver’s process mirrors our own. It will take weeks to set our looms here, and once we get going the details will determine the outcome. Success will require technique and artistry. If we can start to match a weaver’s meticulousness and creativity as we pick through the threads of the grand challenges, perhaps we can weave in some zari of our own.

By
Rohan