There comes a moment after a dinner party when all is quiet. The footsteps deaden, the music stops, and the conversations fade from the living space to the front door, to the cars which drive off silently. You can hear the slow drip of water in the sink where the dirty plates are piled. The fabric on the sofas still carry the imprints of reclined bodies. The leftovers on the dining table look like an abandoned art project.
It was in one of those very moments hunched over and reluctantly picking up food scraps off my bed, that I noticed my age-worn, bright red, embroidered bedspread. Of course I’d noticed it before. But for the very first time, I really began to notice. It was made by our family housemaid in Bangladesh in between her work, and handed to us as a gift. I remember seeing her crafting it by hand for weeks on end, making up the designs in her head as she wove hundreds of running stitches into the soft fabric. The final product — a beautiful bed sheet intricately stitched from corner to corner with motifs of paisleys, flowers, and geometric patterns.
My bedspread is a vivacious Nakshi Kantha artefact. Nakshi Kantha is an ancient art form practised mostly by rural women across Bangladesh and East India. The word ‘Nakshi’ comes from the Bengali word ‘Naksha’, meaning artistic patterns. ‘Kantha’ comes from its Sanskrit equivalent ‘Kontha’, meaning rags. As a practice, Nakshi Kantha stitching dates back a thousand years. It was used to upcycle old, worn-out pieces of fabric and stitch them together layer upon layer to resurrect them as quilts, shawls, cushion covers, and bedspreads. The pieces are iconically double-sided since the running stitch can be applied to both faces of the fabric. Traditionally, Nakshi Kantha pieces were made from frayed sarees, and the threads were sourced from the borders of the sarees themselves. Today, international designer brands and chain retailers across South Asia commercialise traditional Nakshi Kantha designs for contemporary fashion and streetwear.
What amazes me the most about Nakshi Kantha is how simple stitches can narrate such intricate stories. In Hindu cultures, Nakshi Kantha often tell folk tales, and depicts animals, Gods, and characters from religious mythology. In the absence of animals in Islamic art, Nakshi Kantha adapts into a brilliant patchwork of florals, vegetal designs, mandalas, and linework. These stories serve as a mode of expression for the women creating them, and sometimes as the only way to have their voices seen and heard.
When I notice my bedspread now, I try to reflect on the thoughts of the maker when she carefully stitched each thread into the fabric hour after hour. What were her passions and dreams, and did her hands consciously or subconsciously translate them into art? I think too about how casually I use the bedspread, and how uncomfortable it makes me feel thinking about how roughly it’s been handled. Surely a work of art like this should be framed and hung up on a bare wall in some lofty museum?
But Nakshi Kantha is meant to be felt and touched. As a functional art form, it injects beauty and colour into mundane parts of life, like throwing on a shawl or hosting a dinner party. Perhaps then the way to treat Nakshi Kantha with the most integrity is to use it according to the humility it was purposed for — to not notice it until those moments of quietude and stillness, when its embroidered stories finally come to life for those who are willing to pay attention.
