The Silver Lining

Old moth-eaten saris, valuable only for their zari borders, find their way into shops of old Pune

Forty six-year-old Sushma Shelar*, originally from Satara, squints her eyes as she goes around looking for a particular address in Bohri Ali in an older part of Pune. After some effort she finds a small black-and-white signboard, hidden behind numerous festoons and

Republic Day decorations, announcing "Juni zar ghenar (We'll buy old zari)". Clutching the bundle of old, tattered saris that belonged to her great grandmother, she walks into the shop to find Manoj Laxmichand Bafna chatting with a young couple. Shelar waits patiently till they leave and then produces her bundle of saris, which includes a resplendent pink Paithani and a dull green one.

Bafna carefully opens the saris, measures them and takes out a rounded, shiny stone that he rubs vigorously on the old zari. He smiles at the dull silver mark on the stone and quotes his price —

Rs 2,000 for the two. Shelar looks slightly taken aback, but accepts the money. "They were rotting at our ancestral home in Satara. Nobody knew about them," she rues.

Bafna's shop is one of the several tiny shops in Bohri Ali and Budhwar Peth that buy tattered and moth-eaten saris. "We only buy saris that are more than 30 years old. Their condition does not matter. What matters is the sari's border, which contains silver or sometimes gold. For customers, these saris are heirlooms that are of no use now," says Bafna, whose family has been in the business for 60 years.

Old saris, uparnas and shelas (used to decorate shrines at home) are all welcome at these shops. Their only test, or "kasauti" as the shopkeepers call it, is the dull silver or gold mark left on a piece of slate that is rubbed on the intricate borders. "Most of the work on saris in the olden days was in silver. They used to mix threads with molten metal and hence the garments looked so grand," explains Bafna. He gets almost 17-20 saris a month. "On an average, a zari sari weighing about 400 grams contains about 40 grams of silver. We extract the silver and sell it to jewellers," he says. With the rate of silver increasing every day, the business has been profitable so far.

... contd.

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