[ Prem Chetry ]
BICHOM, 25 Apr: Two residents – Harnam Hagam, a gram panchayat member from East Bichom, and Cheten Lagiyang of Dhikyang village – have been making efforts to revive the centuries-old cloth fabrics of the Bugun community of West Kameng district.
The advent of industrial clothing has eroded the centuries-old practice of making cloth fibres from naturally available materials, and has left indelible marks through the loss of cultural identity, while discarding an ancestral legacy once cherished.
Hagam, who was guided by his father, Adang Hagam in the work said, “We used to hear from our elders that our ancestors derived yarn from plants that are still found in abundance. However, the passage of time has alienated us from the legacy of our ancestors.”
The duo has intensively collected some of those raw materials. According to Hagam, there are four plants that yield the raw materials for yarn and can be collected in abundance from Bichom, Wanghoo, Diching, and Dhikyang.
The duo, with the help of a Delhi-based NGO, is scheduled to move to Delhi in the first week of May, where they will prepare yarn and thread from the semi-processed materials, reasoning that there is no one locally to process them further into yarn and then thread.
Hagam further said, “We shall revive our ancestral heritage. If we succeed in obtaining yarn and thread, weaving will be an easier task.”
In the traditional process of making yarn, the bark is peeled off from the stems, then boiled, rinse and dried. Once dried, it is mixed with clay and dried again, which smoothens the raw material and transforms it into yarn and thread.
