Day Six: The Marma Tailors (18 June)
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 19/Jun/2010 12:20, 34 days ago
There is a long street in Khagrachari, one of those between my house and the market, which is lined– like so many of the other streets here – with bamboo buildings, open at the front. This street is a special one though, as inside a stretch of these buildings, are Marma tailors.Marma are the second-largest group of indigenous peoples in these hills. And, like each of the indigenous groups, they have their own distinctive dress. With influences from Myanmar and elsewhere in south-east Asia, the dress consists of long, wraparound skirts known as‘thami’, and short, tightly-fitting blouses, normally in a matching pattern. Simple, easy to put on and to wear, a change from salwar kameez, and coming in a range of colours and hectic prints, Marma dresses are some of my favourites.There is shop after shop of Marma tailors on this street. Groups of women in bright colours and hectic patterns, cutting, ironing, and clacking on foot-powered sewing machines, often with light-golden circles smeared on their cheeks and forehead, another distinctive sign of being Marma.Just like I have one shop for buying onions and other basics, one shop for buying oats and other imported luxuries, I also have my preferred Marma tailors. Three women, surrounded by piles of finished, half-finished, and not-yet-started pieces of Marma dress, and often with other women there too, for cloth, for dress, or just for gossip.And because I’m a regular, they know me too. I’m welcomed and chatted to, and have had clothes altered for a matter of pennies (some of have even been offered for free). They are patient with me as I scan the posters of blouse-styles on the walls (zips? buttons? puffed sleeves?), trying to choose one amongst the many. And they even put additional ties on the skirts, to help me and my bideshi dress-wearing ignorance.Today, I went to get a blouse, made several weeks ago, refitted. As always, after the smiles and polite conversation, I was ushered inside, to sit amongst the fabrics. After explaining in broken Bangla the adjustments needed, the blouse was taken, the stitches undone and then redone in a matter of minutes, while I waited, surrounded by the indecipherable sounds of the Marma language. (Of Khagrachari’s four languages, I find Marma by the far the most difficult. All I’ve got, after twenty months, is ‘how are you?’, ‘I am fine’, and – occasionally, when I can remember – ‘give water’).After less than fifteen minutes, a little confusion about trying the blouse on (was I supposed to take my kameez off? I wasn’t), and promises that I will come again, I was on a rickshaw. Blouse now perfectly fitted, ready for wear with the new thami already hanging in my bedroom.