Hand woven stoles Various Kinds

When Shahid Junaid, master-weaver from Varanasi, took on the challenge of script and calligraphy on cloth, he became aware of the relevance of 15th century weaver-poet Kabir’s teachings in his life. He researched words, songs, poems, phrases, and finally inspired his cousin Shaad Abasi to compose a poem about Kabir for this experiment. Abasi’s poem emerged on the end pieces of stoles woven in Urdu in silk. It says 'kaaf se kargha bane / kaaf se bane kapaas / kaaf se kapda bane / kapde bane libaas / kaaf se karigar bane / kaaf se bane Kabir.

The Devanagari script laid out in an aesthetic manner across the length of the cream and other silk stoles has two lines of Kabir’s most well-known poem das Kabir jatanse odhi, jyon ke tyon dhar dini. The poem jhini re jhini chadariya expresses life as experienced by the human body with the cloth as a metaphor of life. In these lines Kabir says he wore the shawl without soiling it.The many shades of life are reflected in the cream, gold and black of the stoles woven by Shahid Junaid. The white and black lines conjure up the colours on a notebook in which words have been written.