The bright red towel gradually lost its sheen. It was omnipresent at the Saptha Rishi household at Musiri in Tiruchy district. A Balasubramani saw his grandfather use it every day. It faded over two decades of usage; the edges turned a little scruffy due to wear and tear. But it was still there at home, an everyday object they didn’t want to get rid of. It was a typical Kutralam bath towel, a variety in fine cotton that easily absorbed water, as well as dried fast. “It was handwoven, but I do not know who wove it or where it was woven,” recalls Balasubramani, a weaver himself. When the 27-year-old was tasked with weaving towels, he knew what the inspiration would be.
“I decided to use my grandfather’s towel’s design and colours,” he explains. “But I wanted to tweak it to suit the present times.” And so he sat at his loom with the threads and got to work. The towels were for Nurpu, a venture that IT-professional-turned-entrepreneur C Sivagurunathan started, to revive the handloom tradition of Chennimalai in Erode.
