I started weaving the cottage loom in January last year and completed the work this January: Jyoti Bora Dutta

“Assamese women weave dreams on their looms,” Mahatma Gandhi had said during his first visit to Assam in 1921.

Jyoti Bora Dutta, a housewife from Jorhat, recently achieved her dream of weaving Srimanta Xankardeb’s religious book Gunamala, a gist of the Bhagavat Purana, on her cottage loom. Jyoti, a resident of Charingia Bapuji Path under 46 Charingia Gaon panchayat, wove the book’s text with toss muga (Assam tussar silk), a special kind of yarn, over a year with great devotion and dedication. The cloth measures 8mx1m and weighs 2kg.

“I find the scripture interesting. I started weaving it in January last year and completed the work this January. I could materialise my dream with the help of my family members,” she told The Telegraph.

Her husband, Prabhat Dutta, a retired senior assistant in Upper Assam commissioner’s office at Jorhat, checked the spellings of the words weaved in the loom. Her son Anjan, a graduate from ITI Jorhat, helped her by supplying the necessary material while her daughter Ankita, who is doing her graduation in arts, helped her by managing the household chores so that she could devote herself to the loom.