I am sitting in the open verandah of Pollachi RiverHouse, watching palms sway along the Aliyar River and sipping fresh coconut water—the very thing this region is known for. Pollachi is the coconut capital of India, yet it’s not the groves that catch my attention but the two eight-yard saris hanging in the living room as decor. One of these was a green Negamam sari decked with Kolam-inspired motifs, woven with tiny coconut and leaf buttas.
“This is a Negamam cotton sari from my village. We also call it the Village Cot Sari or Getti Ragam—thick variety in local lingo,” Shiva, the property manager tells me. In that moment, the fabric seems to hold Pollachi itself. The next day, almost impulsively, I decide to visit the Periya Negamam weaving cluster, located just 15 kilometres north of the property. If a single sari can hold such a story, I want to see where that story begins.
In Periya Negamam, weaving is not confined to workshops. It lives inside homes. Inside one such house, I met Nagaraj, 50, a third-generation weaver whose pit loom sits half a metre below the floor level. The loom is built into the house itself. His wife, Anandhini, 45, sits nearby separating threads while his mother, Savitri, 60, winds yarn into bobbins. It takes an entire household to keep a loom running. “Moisture-laden winds flowing from the Western Ghats make weaving easier between June and November. The climate prevents the cotton threads from snapping, allowing the weavers to maintain the dense structure that defines a Negamam sari,” Muthu, my guide-translator, tells me.
Photographed by Veidehi Gite
Photographed by Veidehi Gite
