Dale Says

Madan sits on the ground in front of his house cross-legged and barefoot and works on his hand-made loom. He runs a chai tea shop and sells rugs that he and his family make on a hilltop in the country north of the town of Udiapur, India. His isn’t a real shop, just a room filled with rugs and a table for the tea. Madan works 10-12 hours a day, every day, weaving rugs. He learned to make rugs from his father, who learned it from his father. He made his own loom from logs, stones, and iron and he uses instruments of wood and iron that were made by his grandfather. He creates his own designs for his rugs, and dyes his own yarn using natural ingredients such as marigold leaves, turmeric, and indigo.

The rug Madan is working on is about two-thirds finished, so he will work on it about week or two before it is completed and he can put it with the other rugs in the room next to his loom. If he is really lucky it will sell in a month or two.
Madan looks up as we enter and smiles broadly. He seems to be a happy man. He is dressed neatly in a blue dress shirt and dark pants, and his black hair and mustache are neatly trimmed. He has a vertical orange smear above his eyebrows, which indicates he has been to Hindu temple recently. His manner is quiet and hopeful. He demonstrates how he weaves the yarn through his loom and we are fascinated by how quickly and accurately his hands move the different colors of yarn and the parts of the loom. He picks up a tool and compresses the yarn he has just added to his rug and shows how that makes the weaving so tight it is water proof – the water he pours onto the rug pools and sits on the surface.
His four brothers are rug weavers, too, and he tells us in his broken English about his family and the tradition and pride his family has in making rugs. We look at a few of his rugs and fall in love with two of them. We ask their price and hold our breath; after all, he has worked a month on each of them. He does some quick calculations in his head and gives us a price of 9,100 rupees – about $150. We agree, pay him, and he packs our rugs neatly into a small bag.

Before we go, he takes a piece of his home-made yarn and ties a bracelet around each of our wrists. Then he shakes our hands, and we feel the warmth and sincerity in his touch. He gives us a card with his name and address and asks us to send him a photo of his rugs in their new home. Then he clasps his hands, fingers pointing upward in a prayer position, bows, and wishes us namaste. We feel a warm and wonderful connection with him.

Madan is sitting there today on the ground outside his modest home, weaving a rug. He probably hasn’t thought about us again, because he has his own thoughts and his own life to live. But we have thought about him a lot. We love the rugs he made, and we still wear the bracelets he gave us. He is an artist who reached out to us and touched us, and he gave us two rugs that he spent two months of his life making. And our lives are better because we met him.