If Bollywood films could, then sew could we
On screen and off, the sewing machine transformed lives for decades, and it’s still appearing in the role of agent of change
Last week I watched Sir, the debut feature film by Rohena Gera that was the toast of the international festival circuit in 2018-19 and was released earlier this month on Netflix. While the reviews have understandably focused on the delicately etched relationship between the affluent Mumbai architect Ashwin (Vivek Gomber) and his domestic help Ratna (Tillotama Shome), I was struck by something else entirely.
Ratna is a young widow earning a living and paying for the education of her younger sister by working as a “servant”, but she has a dream — of learning to sew and starting her own tailoring business. She enrols in a three-month tailoring course after trying and failing to learn the trade from a disagreeable tailor. When Ashwin gifts her a sewing machine, Ratna’s happiness overwhelms her. She runs her hand lovingly over it, gazing at it in wonder.
In the popular imagination, the sewing machine was often seen as the last fallback of the lone woman — especially one without a commercial skill or formal education.
In Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker (1970), Raju’s widowed mother (Achala Sachdev) stitches his school uniforms and slaves away at her machine making clothes for others, to give him a good education so he won’t grow up to be a circus clown like his father. In Yash Chopra’s Trishul (1978), when a pregnant Shanti (Waheeda Rehman) is abandoned by her lover Raj (Sanjeev Kumar), she raises her son on money she earns stitching clothes on her machine.
As recently as 2007, in Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Savitri (Jaya Bachchan), whose husband has fallen on hard times, runs her household on her earnings from stitching petticoats late into the night.
The sewing machine has also stood for ideal wifely and feminine qualities, a symbol of the kind of woman who excels in quiet and useful domestic work. In the early
’70s, an ad for a popular sewing machine brand showed a picture of a mother and daughter, with the tagline: “Train her to be an ideal housewife.” Another announced: “A gift of love on her wedding day…” (My own mother got a gleaming Singer when she got married, and used it for years.)
Historian David Arnold, in his terrific book Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity, reveals that sewing machines were first introduced in India in the 1850s, but even by the beginning of World War 1, barely 1% of Indian households had one. These were imported machines, mostly of the American Singer brand. After Independence, the indigenisation of sewing machines took off in earnest.
Singer, incidentally, was named for Isaac Merrit Singer, the businessman who first patented and mass-produced the sewing machine. Tim Harford, presenter of the BBC radio show and podcast 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, says he was a womaniser who kept a sharp eye on the profit line. But as Harford puts it sometimes, “…social progress can be advanced by the most self-interested of motives”.
Despite the clichés, in the end the sewing machine was a game-changing invention for women. It was easy to operate, relatively cheap, could be carried from place to place, was an enormous time-saver (if it took over 10 hours to stitch a shirt by hand, it took an hour on the machine), and most vitally, it opened up an avenue by which women could earn a living independently, at home.
As for how it changed the life of the professional darzi and paved the way for the modern garments industry, well, that’s a story for another day.