A stitch in time fails to save this intricate skill

September 21, 2014 09:51 am | Updated 09:51 am IST - DELHI:

Darning requires special skill, where the stitch is nearly invisible. That is, one can’t make out the repaired portion unless it is pointed out. It is a skill only a rafoogar possesses. Photo: S. Subramanium

Darning requires special skill, where the stitch is nearly invisible. That is, one can’t make out the repaired portion unless it is pointed out. It is a skill only a rafoogar possesses. Photo: S. Subramanium

Eighty-five-year-old Nooruddin peers carefully at the tear in the trousers, flips it out and proclaims: “ Theek hai . Ho jayega [Okay. It can be repaired].” He proceeds to ask for Rs.100 for the job.

Nooruddin has to rafoo (darn) the tear in the trousers as it is no longer possible to repair it with a sewing machine. Darning requires special skills, where the stitch is nearly invisible, that is, one can’t make out the repaired portion unless it is pointed out. It is a skill only a rafoogar possesses.

Nooruddin is among the few rafoogars Delhi is left with. However, this rather intricate skill pays too little. This despite the skill having too many takers, who ironically do not know that such a thing still exists. Real rafoogars can stitch most expensive of clothes like original pashmina shawls, jamawars , Banarasi saris, woollens, georgettes, and even denims.

Nooruddin shows a bunch of darned cloth swatches as proof of his immaculate skill. Till date, he only wears glasses while darning and not otherwise. He sits on the stairs of Chawri Bazar’s Lal Masjid and rafoos clothes from morning till late evening.

Almost half his age is Sajid Suhail, another rafoogar at Chawri Bazar, whose forefathers were also in the same trade. A well educated, highly-read Sajid has been darning clothes for 40 years in a humble shop — number 712 and called Modern Rafoogar — which was established here in 1940. His father Mohammad Yasin is Nooruddin’s uncle, from whom Nooruddin learnt this art.

If Nooruddin has opened a lock shop to supplement his income, Sajid sells tea and snacks to look after his family of five.

Sajid recalls how “from fazr (early morning) to isha (late night), customers used to pour in for rafoo work.

“We used to be booked for months at stretch. We could give back clothes only once in 15 days or a month. For jamawars , pashminas and Banarasi rafoo , customers used to pay whatever we demanded. But this generation doesn’t know that something called rafoo still exists. Thus, despite having lots of clothes which can be restored through darning, they either throw or give them away,” he moans.

The rafoogars say there are two rafoo types — patchwork and tana-bana . In patchwork type of darning, a part of the same cloth is cut, fixed over the torn part and then stitched finely. In tana-bana , threads from the cloth are pulled out from the inside portion and an invisible rafoo is done by intricate cross-stitching.

Both Noorddin and Sajid used to have at least eight people working under them earlier. Now they barely get five to 30 clothes a month, for which they charge between Rs.20 and Rs.200 depending upon the work involved.

Says Sajid: “Some dry-cleaners employ rafoogars across Delhi these days, but they are not skilled. They just do patchwork.”

Others either sit on the stairs of Jama Masjid or on footpaths in different parts of the Walled City. Chawri Bazaar is known for the most accessible and skilled rafoogars .

Notably, the tales of Shahjahan, Akbar-Birbal, Arabian Nights, especially Ali Baba Aur Chaalis Chor and most old books on the Walled City, especially in Urdu, have detailed writings on the skill of rafoogars .

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