Part1: To make a textile kaleidoscope, the stitching craftsmen must assume highest dhyana, or concentration. With single mind focus Gurmel Singh blocks out all other distractions and carefully engages in picking each tiniest piece of fabric and aligning into the desired geometry. He then engages with it through cutting, ironing, aligning, joining, recutting, ironing, aligning, joining each triangle to construct new boxes. Over few days of meticulously joining each of these tiny scraps, a kaleidoscope takes shape. In its construction it is a patchwork, in its execution it is Dhyana.

Part 2: In the Pallu, along with the kaleidoscope, panels of Dimasa weave motifs appear. Dimasas inhabit North Cachar Hills, the only hill region of Assam. I have been able to spend 6 years working with Dimasa community and explored many of their traditional motifs while living in Haflong and surrounding villages. I learnt about their food, taboos, language, festivals and rituals. Attended weddings, child birth and funerals. The weaves made with Dimasa tribe were part of the cotton awareness drive we carried out across North East India where many hundreds of kilos of cotton yarn from Salem, Tamil Nadu were carried to these regions so that we could sensitise weavers towards not forgetting the art of weaving with natural yarns. Synthetic yarns offer higher tensile strength and are not easy to break so the weavers prefer weaving with them as they can go much faster.

All the 6 years with Dimasa tribe, each weave we worked on together was made with cotton. These weaves were woven with consent of the weavers, with credit to the Dimasa community who are the original custodians of the motifs, designed in collaboration with weavers and facilitators, with sustained and encouraging compensation. This weave is made by Molina.

The weaves and songs of the tribe are their documented history. To me, they are more real than books. Their rich ancestry is a keen topic of infinite exploration.

Part 3: The base textile of the sari is composed of plain and check pattern textiles woven by Tai Khampti weavers from Arunachal Pradesh. We had brought about 500 kgs of cotton yarn to Arunachal Pradesh and took it as a drive to sensitise weavers towards using cotton over easily available synthetic yarns. This initiative brought livelihood to untrained weavers, single mothers, and older women to engage in weaving plain, checks and striped fabrics.

When we look with Dhyana, we will see many elements in this sari that will reveal over time.

Dimasa textile related vocabulary incorporated in the sari: Gishim bodo, Dilam ball( leaf), Yuina Gibim, Ruina yakhri.