Khinkhwab Diaries

Simple at-home ways to tell pure silk from art silk — the burn test, the feel and the sheen — so you know what your saree is truly made of.

What you are really paying for in a Banarasi — how silk, zari, weave and labour add up, and how to read the price of a saree with confidence.

Why a handloom Banarasi costs more than a powerloom one — the months of skilled human work, the real silk and the zari behind the price.

Colour within the gold — how Banarasi weavers fill their motifs with jewel-bright resham, borrowing the jeweller's enamel art, and how it differs from rangkat.

Jaal or jangla? Both cover a saree all over — but a jangla is the densest, wildest, most jungle-like jaal of all. The difference, explained.

Colour-blocking on the handloom — how a Rangkat saree's ground shifts from one colour to the next, joined block by block, in one of the rarest Banarasi weaves.

The satin-weave Banarasi — dense, smooth and clean-backed — and the three-brothers legend behind its unusual name.

A field guide to the language of Banarasi motifs — the bootis, jals and janglas, the borders, and the meanings woven into peacocks, lotuses and vines.

Indigo from the vat, red from madder and lac, yellow from turmeric and flowers — how silk was coloured with natural dyes before synthetic colour arrived.

The hunting-scene Banarasi — forests, beasts and riders woven across the silk — and its southern cousin, the Vanasingaram of Kanchipuram.

A single Banarasi saree passes through many hands — the designer, weaver, naari-fillers, dyers, comb-makers, darners and polishers of Varanasi. Meet the people behind the cloth.

A history of the looms behind the Banarasi saree — the draw loom and its draw boy, the pit loom, the backstrap and frame looms, the Jacquard revolution and the...