Culture Gully: Toda artisans showcase their rich embroidery for city connoisseurs

Jaya Muthu (50) and Tejamma (60) have been creating shawls and garments with the intricate Toda embroidery since they were in school. It has been a source of recreation, a vent for creative energy and over the last decade, a source of monetary relief. 

As they show us their beautiful work, we can’t help but ask them about the details of their special art form. Says Jaya, “For the Toda men and women, wearing an embroidered shawl is not only a matter of aesthetics but also a way of carrying oneself with dignity. Each ceremony from birth, wedding to death demands a particular design on the shawl or pooth kulli. The base material, normally white in colour, is hand woven in single width and the embroidery is done by counting of threads. Wide bands in red and black are woven at the end of the 9-yard long shawl. The women embroider in between these bands creating a striking pallav.” 

The embroidery is worked on the reverse of the cloth to produce a rich, embossed effect on the surface. The geometric motifs, merging as they do with the woven bands are often mistaken for woven patterns. The women do not refer to a stitching pattern as we do for creating cross stitch designs. Out of practice, they create the design on the cloth without tracing the pattern or referring to a book. “We have certain standard patterns but we love to innovate and it is this space for using our creative energy that we really cherish. It helps us to think and design,” says Tejamma. It is this creative satisfaction that drives them to take up the embroidery in free time. “But most of us have to pursue it in the daytime only since there is no electricity in the houses and after it gets dark, it is difficult to carry out the embroidery with precision,” she says. 

Todas live in around 70 hamlets surrounded by stone circles of the megalith burial sites on hilltops. The hamlets consist only curved huts constructed with bamboo and thatched grass constructed in the shape of half-barrels and spread across the slopes of the pasture. They traditionally trade dairy products with their Nilgiri neighbours. Toda religion centres on the buffalo; consequently, rituals are performed for all dairy activities as well as for the ordination of dairymen-priests. 

During ceremonies, they require particular plants and flowers. And that’s when one realises that all the plants and flowers are found in the hamlets. It is one of the reasons most of the embroidery has motifs of plants and flowers. 

While formerly vegetable fibre was used as threads, now embroidery threads are used. The embroidery on the shawls which is done on the left of the black stripe (around the two red stripes) is called the karnol, while the embroidered pattern on the right is called the karthal. Toda embroidery, unique to tribal community of the Nilgiris, was granted Geographical Indication (GI) status in 2012. 

While the present generation of men and women hold the Toda embroidery form close to heart, do they feel their next generation will take it up and practice it? “They all go to schools and lots of homework to do. Many of them hardly have time to pursue it. But we feel the government needs to support the art form by setting up units to teach the embroidery form professionally. This will help the next generation to warm up to it and take it up as entrepreneurial ventures,” finishes Jaya. 

The Toda artisans were part of the 19th edition of By Hand From The Heart: One Show, Many Stories!