Gamosas of different designs and (above) gamosas used to cover bellmetal xorais

Their looms and their gamosas tell their tales of love and longing. It is a symphony of sorts, Toramai sitting at her taatxal, her wooden Assamese loom, feet tapping its pedals like those of an organ weaving through its notes, her jetuka-laden hands ceaselessly thrusting her spindle. Once done, someone somewhere, maybe a lovelorn Rongmon, gets his bhomoka phulia, that big-bloomed red gamosa he will tie round his head as he sings his Bihu this Bohag.

The koel is here the kuli, come down to the plains from faraway mountains in faraway lands — she is the one who does the high-pitched aria as Toramai weaves for her lover.

And stories her gamosa will tell, like those her mother told, and her mother before her, stories of love and longing, of good days and god. Her gamosa will sometime dress the xorai that offers the token to the husori that is come home to sing; embroidered with the pious Ram and Hari, it will maybe lay beneath the Kirtan that one day her children will worship.

Of the many gamosas she will weave, the coarser will be the one her Rongmon maybe will carry to the river for his bath after a hard day’s toil in the paddy fields. Maybe, if she has more this season and in the one after that, and the one after that, when she has her Rongmon and they their brood, maybe Rongmon will sell them for something in the village haat, that weekly market where she and her girls will buy their trinkets.

And Rongmon has asked for his gamosa, he has sung about it too in his husori. “Aghon mah pare hoi phagun mah palehi/ Kulie binabor hol/Keikathi gamosa boli oi nasoni/Bihu ahi paborei hol (The months have gone from Aghun to Phagun/It is time for the kuli to sing/ How many gamosas did you weave dancer/Bihu is almost upon us,” he had said.

That day, Toramai took to her taat.

There is much love to be woven here, enough to make the gamosa a verse of the Bihu forever. And weave she must, the finest of gamosas. Else, what if her Rongmon were not to approve?

“Sotalor agore koliya tuloxi,” he may say, you know, “Mele posimoloi daal... Jikhoni gamosa jasila Ghunusa, jaal mariboloi bhal.” Like the tulsi that has its branches reaching westward, her gamosa, will he say, is so coarse it could have been a fishing net? Had she got her weave wrong? Or, the blooms? Or, the red? A true blue Assamese belle she is, this Toramai, nothing will ever go wrong. She won’t let it.

And Toramais there are so many in this land, from the Barak to the Brahmaputra, like the warp and weft of her towel of love, her gamosa loves all, no caste, no creed, no community left out. In turn, they have always loved her gamosa. It is their tale of life. It is a Rongmon’s life everywhere in these valleys and plains and mountains.

And somewhere in her story, someone gave it a size: three by her soft hand, from her elbow to the tips of her fingers. “Three-and-a-half feet,” says the village teacher. No matter, it is all about love. And Toramai can be partial, for Rongmon she can. And if she can save enough she will weave him one with a thread of gold by the border, the rest all blooms of red. Maybe Rongmon would really wear it to Bihu and show off his Toramai. She would give him two: one maybe for his dhol too. After all, he is her. Rongmon is her Bihua. Maybe three, one for him to wear round his neck the best of Bihuas did, you know. He is hers. And who knows, if her weaving is good this year, maybe the elders will gift her gamosa to the minister who will make his way to her village sometime. Wouldn’t they all be proud of her? Their Toramai, they’d say.

And she has her tales to live up to: many silvery moons ago, they say, when kings went to war, their women would weave them gamosas in a single night. They were worn like a shield, an armour of blessings and love, they say, a shield no enemy’s arrow could breach. But just now, she must weave. For her and her Rongmon’s Bihu is here.

Additional reporting by Rajiv Konwar and Smita Bhattacharyya