Jain Spirit 2003 06 No 15

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 38

ART & LITERATURE
THE GREAT
or Pag molbalno 2
MIGRATION BEGINS
To had blow vagy
Journeying into her Gujarati Jain family's history, Mira Kamdar discovers how her adventurous great-great-uncle led her grandmother's family to Burma's riches
No
TO MATTER HOW RICH THEY GOT OR HOW MANY decades they lived in town, the Kharas were always known to the people of Amreli as gokhlanawalas, which could be loosely translated as "hayseeds from Gokhlana." They never entirely shook their village origins. Why did they leave the village? It was serendipity, precipitated by a teenage boy in the family who, at an impressionable age, made a rash decision. Sometime right around 1900, no one alive knows exactly when, Jakalben Khara, Motiba's paternal grandmother, wanted to have her kaambis, or heavy silver ankle bracelets, repaired. In those days, Jakalben dressed in the distinctly regional clothing of village Kathiawar. She wore an open-backed blouse called a kamkha, tied
Jain Spirit June August 2003
36
by a string at the back of the neck and the waist, tightly fitted in front with gathered pouches to contain the breasts, and nearly completely covered with embroidered motifs. She wore a gathered full-length skirt, or chaniyo, into which was tucked a kapdu, or half-sari, that was brought around the back and pulled up over the head and the right shoulder to drape in front before being drawn around and tucked into the left side of the skirt. The kapdu could be pulled down to completely cover the face in laaj in the presence of males or for going out in public where one might be seen by males. Finally, she was covered with jewellery. From her earlobes hung heavy gold earrings. More earrings adorned the outer edge of each ear, going all the
PHOTO: JAMES MATURIN-BAIRD