An Invitation into the world of enchanting exchanges
Oh! I gasped as soon as I saw the bright, almost golden colored fabric. The bright color with its pattern of white circles seemed to shout from across the room in my New York City home.
My colleague Ram had brought it as a gift from makers we knew in Tamil Nadu, India, whom I had not seen for several years. I had seen other products made by The Yellow Bag company - a nifty start up enterprise which was producing bags for conferences and companies in India made with organic cotton and stitched by low income village women and died with natural dies. I had been impressed enough with their products that I had ordered from them before. And our networks in India are deep with beautiful fabrics. - rarely am I not smitten with the colors, the weaves, the patterns.
But this was the first time I had seen anything quite like this. I reached out to touch the soft organic fabric.
Little did I know I was touching an invitation. An invitation into a world made beautiful by the myths and the reality of plants, people, and their energetic exchanges.
“The die is turmeric,” Ram told me.
Turmeric? I gasped. I looked at the golden color again. Of course it was.
Turmeric, a relatively small root grown in tropical countries, especially India, has become popular recently. You might have seen it offered as a “golden latte” at your recent coffee shop. It is also increasingly used in herbal cosmetics, oils, and cooking. As the little root becomes increasingly sought by pharmaceutical companies and cosmetic corporations to feed the growing demand outside of its traditional home of South East Asia, its ancient ties to the people and the stories of the land are changing and, often, being lost.
People (also referred to as consumers) in America might hear the word Turmeric and think, oh, right, health benefits. But in that thought pattern, they are loosing the stories, the meaning, and the socio-ecological multiplicity of what this plant is and what it has been used for. The plant changes in ways that are a net-sum loss for the grower, the consumer, and possibly the plant itself.
Most people have no idea that turmeric is used in purification rituals in small shops across India. Or that it has been used for centuries as a die for robes for monks and other temple-dwellers. Or the stories - from families in villages to court palaces - that the little root is part of. The root is not only a plant, and part of a bio-sphere. It is, like so many sacred plants, part of a spiritual, ecological, and cultural eco-system.
The question becomes, how can we enable plants to remain sacred - entrenched within the stories and mythologies, their many meanings, as they travel around the world?
Within minutes of seeing this bag I knew I wanted to try selling it to friends in the United States. And I knew I wanted to tell not only the story of the intellectually challenged women’s cooperative who made it, but of the plants themselves. In a progressive culture increasingly obsessed with the health qualities of this plant, what might open up?
I started working directly with MakersCart, run by the 24-year-old lady Sardana and mentored by our old friend Krishnan at The Yellow Bag. She showed me some other dies they used - indigo, Indian Redwood, which makes a remarkable purplish color) and Ebony, which creates a deep brown die. Each color was amazing. And each plant had an enchanting story to tell.
Some images of the women making the bags.
SMLXL
unwrapping the ties
the cloth hanging to dry
As I shared the bags with people I started telling them stories about the plants. They loved the bags because they are beautiful. And soft. And delightful. It is probably the first rule of any good product: you need a good product. And they were entranced with the story. I started taking pictures of the customers who wore the bags and sending them back to the women who made them in India.
No, the makers do not have to fly to America to meet the person who is buying from them. Instead, both sides could see one another, find a way to stretch the distance and engage in the kind of economic exchange that is so much more than a product: the coveted exchange of stories, of sensual delight, of the magic of the wonder that a little root can create a bright yellow fabric with the help of (in this case) women’s hands. Stories - such a critical part of enchanting - can begin to be shared. Not least because I had them put a little tag telling some of the stories of the plants the dies are made from.
Finished bag in the hands of a happy man! This deep blue bag is indigo, modeled by our friend Ram in Chennai, India
We might even say these are moments of enchantment. When we fall in love with our world and in the process perhaps we fall a little bit more in love with ourselves and one another.
So very different from a turmeric cosmetic powder, all tightly bound in plastic to keep it “clean”, but missing the story and the wisdom that this plant has long been part of rituals of purification.
What might more enchanted exchanges - enchanted economies - look like? What stories and myths and opportunities for collective meaning making might we create?
Let us go deeper into enchanting our economies. Not just "doing good". But really engaging in the myths, the stories, behind and with the plants and animals with whom we have the delight of sharing this world. To rejoice in the spiritual-in-the material; the magnificence of all of them.
If you are interested in giving one of these beautiful Bags of Kindness or just enjoying them yourself, contact sarajolena@sequoiasamanvaya.com and specify if you want turmeric yellow, indigo blue, Indian Redwood purple or Ebony Tree brown or the sling-bag, a combination of turmeric and Indian Redwood. Bags for Small Mysteries - 3 zippers on the bags that sling over - are also available.