“I belong to the Padmashali community who are traditionally known for handloom weaving. All the men and women in our community divide the work equally and every month, we weave around 10-20 sarees together along with our workers. Our town, Jangaon is an important cluster for the handloom weavers and we predominantly weave the ikkat patterns here.

The silk threads and the zari, before going onto the weaving loom, is separated to weave horizontally and also to avoid any tangles which may leave uneven surfaces in the finished product.

After completing my daily chores at home, I sit down to do this, and it is the most important step, because, without this, weaving cannot begin. It involves a lot of hard work and everything we do is interlinked. If there is a mistake in this step, the finished product won’t look good and eventually will be rejected.

By this time of the month every year, we usually receive orders from our dealers in the cities. Just when we were coming out of the losses incurred during Covid-induced lockdown last year, the second wave had hit us even worse.

Things are slowly coming back to normal for the last few weeks and we are hopeful that we could get orders keeping in mind the next big festive season which is Bathukamma and Dussehra.”