The Weavers Of My Town Poem by Ramesh Iyengar

They call themselves as saaliyar community.

In the north of my hometown,
the weavers squatted long back,
during the pre-independent period,
and made coarse cotton robes for British sepoys,
much to the appreciation of English bosses.


Together as one clan they occupied
many a street,
lanes, bypasses and narrow pathways,
they propagated into nine streets.

Built tile-roof houses,
and wove clothes all the day, all the night.

A community of one hundred thousand.
They grouped together,
intermingled, and married within their caste,
to beget generations of men and women,
till no one knew who their ancestors were.

The weaving apparatus, their only asset.

Waking in the vee-hours of morning,
after a breakfast of sweet kesari, uppumaa and tea,
they weave till
they lose all their sweat or
the sun goes right over their heads.

Widowed women in white saris,
Un-bloused, bare- footed,
spin thread in gandhian charka –wheel,
Under the shady neem trees, along the streets,
listening to tales of neighbours, gossiping,
chatting innocently of everyone except themselves.

They convened local assemblies,
to hear family disputes,
and solved almost every serious issue,
other than Nuclear weapons program and Iraq civil war.

I love to look at those streets,
that community of weavers, young and old,
aged elders torn and battered due to working.

Each time I go to buy kerosene and wheat,
from public distribution ration shop,
I watch this Saaliyar community with eagerness.

But, each time I visit their street,
One thing that irks my eyes,
the weavers who clothe everyone in my state,
remain without shirts and always half-naked.