Poem Decca Gauzes

Decca Gauzes

Poem

The Dacca Gauzes

Those transparent Dacca gauzes

known as woven air, running

water, evening dew:

a dead art now, dead over

a hundred years. " No one

now knows, " my grandmother says,

" what it was to wear

or touch that cloth. " She wore

it once, an heirloom sari from

her mother's dowry, proved

genuine when it was pulled, all

six yards, through a ring.

Years later when it tore,

many handkerchiefs embroidered

with gold-thread paisleys

were distributed among

the nieces and daughters-in-law.

Those too now lost.

In history we learned: the hands

of weavers were amputated,

the looms of Bengal silenced,

and the cotton shipped raw

by the British to England.

History of little use to her,

my grandmother just says

how the muslins of today

seem so coarse and that only

in autumn, should one wake up

at dawn to pray, can one

feel that same texture again.

One morning, she says, the air

was dew-starched: she pulled

it absently through her ring

 

 

 Analysis

 Poem by Agha Shahid Ali is about the Dacca Gauze, a fabric so fine and slim that he portrays it as woven air. It is an account of the writer's understandings of the 'dead specialty' of winding around and how his grandma laments over the deficiency of the lovely texture.

The artist starts with letting us know how slim the material was. He refers to it as "woven air, running water, evening dew." The craft of winding around such material was no more, a "dead workmanship now, dead north of 100 years." He recollects a sari that his grandma once wore. He reviews how every last bit of it very well may be gotten through a ring and when it tore, it was cut into little hankies. The artist is upset about the verifiable reality that the British cut off the hands of Bengali weavers and transported the texture to England. From that point forward, nobody has had the option to create a fabric lined up in quality to the Dacca clothes.

The other discernment in the sonnet is that of the grandma. She is least worried about the miserable history of Bengal and how 'the weaving machines Bengal were hushed.' Her main distress is that the mind blowing Dacca clothes don't exist any longer. According to she, "Nobody presently understands what it was to wear or contact that material." Deeply involved in her recollections, the grandma frequently attempts to haul the non-existent muslin out of the air.

'The Dacca Gauzes' is a ride to the past of the writer's grandma and her serious affection for the splendid Sari.

Decca Gauze ( Silk Sari )

The Looms of Bengal Silenced": History and Memory in Agha Shahid Ali's "The Dacca Gauzes"

The reference to the dazzling texture, the refined Bengali muslin, in Agha Shahid Ali's sonnet, "The Dacca Gauzes," fills in as a representation of loss of history and memory. Portraying his grandmas sentimentality for this lovely muslin and its quality in the lines nobody currently knows, my grandma says, what it resembled to wear that material, the speaker tends to the brilliance of this workmanship. The juxtaposition of the grandmas nostalgic memory, in the accompanying symbolism, the air/was dew-treated: she pulled/it absently through her ring, mirroring the ephemerality of the material, presently lost to history, with the speakers authentic information on the complex Dhaka muslins in the accompanying lines, In history we took in: the hands/of weavers were cut away,/the weavers Bengal hushed, shows how the expressions and symbolism in the sonnet mirror its subjects of sentimentality and misfortune.