Singing the Colors

“Red, six, two blue, two, gold, red, three.” The weavers sing the Hindi words, the melody line flowing through half-tones of four notes, fingers dancing to the chant, pulling red, blue and gold threads between string stretched tight around massive rollers. The hiss of wool on wool builds the sound; the soft whisper of round blades slicing through threads is faint as a memory. “Red, three, two gold, blue, two gold.”

Slam! Down come the forks, packing knotted threads into the intricacy of a growing pattern. Slam! Slam! Slam! These are the kettle drums of the weavers’ music.

Back go the fingers, four sets or more to a loom, filling in background color on the next row, waiting for the song to lead the colors to their appointed places, to create the intricate designs and the velvet nap of an Agra carpet. One chant cascades into another, each carpet with its own lyrics and music, repeated and repeated, one voice dying away, another taking its place, piling century upon century, time becoming a solid unit without change.

These timeless, almost wear-proof tapestries sing to their owners as the weavers sang in their creation, the colors shimmering in sunlight, iridescent beneath candles, the nap shining when turned one way, darkening the other. And, they have traveled far, these singing carpets, covering floors in Arizona and California, shimmering once in Versailles’ famous Hall of Mirrors, gracing London salons for the past five centuries, and filling the palaces of the Moghul Emperors.

I imagine them spread around us as we sit on a wall in an elaborately carved pavilion that served as a prison for Shah Jahan and look up the Yamuna River to the marble tracery of the Taj Mahal.

The old shah would have relaxed, not on the wall but on Agra carpets created by the fingers and songs of his subjects while he stared at the ethereal sight of the Taj Mahal, the tomb he had built for his much-loved wife, a woman of laughter and music. Together, they would have spent hours on such carpets, their memories woven into curving leaves and climbing vines.

History moves on. The carpets and the singing of the colors stayed the same. Three centuries later, the British flooded into these same palaces, seeking the protection of the exterior walls of Agra’s massive Red Fort. Six thousand English came through heat reaching 136 degrees Fahrenheit, in carts overflowing with carpets and ayahs, followed by horses and bearers.

They tacked their carpets, colors alive even in the killing heat, over empty door frames and along pillared arcades, spread them over stone floors, creating stifling rooms where their owners lay in fetid disorder for months, disorganized and demoralized, fearing the uprising of the Indian troops that killed whole British garrisons elsewhere, afraid of the rioting in the town.

Bad things happen, but the singing of the colors goes on, as inexorable as the flow of life, itself. I think of this as we watch the weavers’ fingers flickering through the wool, listen to the music building yet another carpet. Even on the loom it is developing a jeweled quality, beginning its own song. “Two red, gold, six, gold, two red, blue.”

Slam! And another row is complete.