These six-yard long pieces of cloth are not just elegant garments. They are a quiet witness to separation, and to the enduring threads of connection that persist despite the politics that keep us apart.
By Rumana Husain / Global Southasia
KARACHI: I have a very special, pure saree from Gadwal, a historic town in the Indian state of Telangana, with Hyderabad as its capital. The town is globally renowned for its traditional handcrafted sarees.
What makes a Gadwal saree unique is its exquisite combination: A pure cotton body, a silk border, and a pallu, the decorative end of a saree that falls over the shoulder, richly woven with silk or zari (metal thread).
The Gadwal saree craftsmanship is so fine and lightweight that, as legend has it, an entire saree can be folded and tucked into a matchbox. I have never risked testing this theory– folding and refolding my precious saree is not an experiment I am prepared to conduct!
In 2019, my dear friend Charu Verma carried this saree from Delhi, where she lives, to America, and mailed it to my son Adil in Washington D.C. She had obtained his address on the pretext that she and her husband would try to visit him while holidaying in the U.S. that summer.
That August, my husband and I traveled to meet Adil, his wife, and two daughters at Dubai airport. The six of us would then fly to Cape Town, South Africa.
Adil did not mention the package he was carrying until a few days after we arrived at the Kapama Safari Resort in the Greater Kruger National Park. There, quite unexpectedly, in the middle of that wilderness, he presented the gift-wrapped saree to me.
That saree had travelled a remarkable journey of thousands of miles: from Gadwal to Delhi, to DC, to Dubai, to Cape Town, and finally to Kapama.
Now consider this: The direct distance between Karachi and Delhi is approximately 1,070 kilometres. Karachi to Lahore in Pakistan is about 1,200 kilometres. And yet, this Gadwal saree had to cross oceans, mountains, and continents, passing through multiple countries, before it could reach me. Such is the reality shaped by history.
A desire to visit
Verma is a homemaker and former teacher who reached out to me on Facebook in 2017. We have spoken a few times since then but have yet to meet.
She has been enamoured of all things Pakistani since childhood.
“Maybe it had to do with all the happy stories that we heard from the grannies of a lost era. So, there’s a piece of us still in Pakistan,” she said. “I nurture this desire to visit the country although everyone I know discourages me.”
Over the years, she has become my closest virtual Indian friend – and one of the warmest friendships I have made across the border.
“Oh, so you found another you in Pakistan!” exclaimed her daughter on hearing about our relationship.
Verma says that she took it as a compliment.
A year or so later, she sent me another saree, a linen one covered with traditional Ajrak motifs — distinctive age-old geometric patterns block-printed using hand-carved wooden blocks. She posted it to her son in Japan, from where he couriered it to me.
Ajrak, with its deep, rich colours, has been part of the Sindhi culture for centuries, and it was particularly lovely to receive this interpretation of a textile tradition so deeply rooted in my own part of the world.
Another Indian friend, the writer and artist Saaz Aggarwal, who lives in Pune, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, has also gifted me several sarees. She contacted me in 2011, while writing her book Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland.
She had come across reviews of my book, Karachiwala: A Subcontinent within a City, and emailed me to verify certain details in her own writing, as she had never visited Pakistan. I was happy to provide the information she needed and also put her in touch with my friend, the historian, author, and politician Dr.Hamida Khuhro, who could provide more authoritative insights.
After Aggarwal’s book was published in India in November 2012, I told my friend Ameena Saiyid about it. Ameena was then Managing Director of Oxford University Press (OUP) and had founded the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF). Given the book’s deep relevance to Pakistan, I suggested that OUP consider publishing it and that Aggarwal be invited to the KLF for its launch in early 2013.
Ameena got OUP to publish the book in Pakistan as Sindh: Stories from a Lost Homeland, launched at the Karachi Literature Festival in February 2013. Aggarwal came over with her family, and that was how we finally met in person. She had brought three sarees for me.
Subsequently, on a 2015 visit to Pondicherry, she picked up a lightweight hand-block-printed saree for me. She also bought me a traditional handloom Kasavu saree from Kerala.
She posted both sarees from Pune to my address in Karachi, hoping they would reach me before my birthday on May 14. But, most curiously, for almost a month they made detours to Kolkata and Mumbai, and then back to Pune.It was as if the postal service had absolutely no idea where Karachi was located!Eventually, they figured it out, and the sarees finally found their way to me.
‘Six Yards and 365 Days’
Another saree story is associated with Dr. Alka Raghuvanshi, artist, art and dance critic and curator, who I approached around 2013 to write for NuktaArt, an international art magazine I co-founded, and was Senior Editor of from 2004 to 2014.
In 2015 Dr. Raghuvanshi invited me to join a Facebook group she and three others had co-founded that August, called “Six Yards and 365 Days”. Her co-founders were Sunita Budhiraja, a communication professional, author and poet; Vijayalakshmi Chhabra, former Director General of Doordarshan; and Sanjeev Manglani, a saree connoisseur and entrepreneur.
The group celebrates the saree while promoting handloom and traditional hand-crafted textiles. Every saree posted to the group has to be either handwoven, hand-block printed, hand-painted or hand-embroidered, rather than power-loomed. I became an enthusiastic participant, as I have been wearing sarees for decades.
After my 100th saree post in September 2017 (sarees are repeated, of course), I received a citation and a beautiful Sambalpuri ikat saree from Dr. Raghuvanshi, Budhiraja and Vijayalaxmi.
Budhiraja wrote that I had become the first ‘overseas’ member to reach the century mark. My gift from Delhi arrived in the mail in just three days, which was not short of a miracle.
That exchange revealed another, more personal connection. Budhiraja’s parents had come from Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan, and she wrote movingly about the “sondhi mitti ki khushboo” (earthy, fragrant smell of the soil) they brought with them. She felt that my reaching 100 sarees was an opportunity to reciprocate the affection she felt for Pakistan.
Tragically, both Budhiraja and Dr. Raghuvanshi died during the Covid pandemic. The warmth of our friendship remains. I remain in regular contact with Aggarwal, Verma and Vijayalakshmi Chhabra.
Although my connection with them and with several other women, including Neelima Kamrah who runs a school (and sent me a Santhal tribal saree) began through Dr. Raghuvanshi, it deepened through our shared love of the saree, textiles, culture and, increasingly, a friendship that crossed the India-Pakistan border.
For nearly eight decades, unresolved differences and animosities between our governments have turned what might have been simple, friendly visits into long, circuitous journeys. Families remain divided, friendships stretched across borders, and what could have been ordinary meetings are instead made extraordinary by distance.
These sarees, then, are not just garments.
They are a quiet witness to separation, and to the enduring threads of connection that persist despite the politics that keep us physically apart.
Rumana Husain is an award winning Karachi-based author, artist, and educator with a deep commitment to storytelling, art, and social impact. She was the co-founder and Senior Editor of NuktaArt, and has authored two coffee-table books: ‘Karachiwala – A Subcontinent within a City’ (2010) and ‘Street Smart – Professionals on the Street’ (2015). She has written and/or illustrated over 90 children’s books and is also a regular contributor to various newspapers.
This is a Global Southasia syndicated feature updated from the writer’s SubStack where it was first published. Please credit Global Southasia and Rumana Husain when re-using.
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