Soumya Ranjan called me one day, insisting that the next time I visited Astaranga for our mangroves project, I take a small detour to Manduki village. “They make beautiful handwoven baskets from sea grass,” he said. Sophie, our partner in crime (when she’s traveling in India), always eager to encourage marginal artists in our sustainable tourism adventures at Svanir, agreed enthusiastically.
After meeting the Mangrove volunteers at Astaranga market, we followed their lead to reach the village. A narrow concrete road ran through the village, with fields on one side and houses on the other. Stacked bales of husk were being spread out on the road to dry. As we alighted from our vehicle, the inquisitive villagers stopped their work, trying to figure out our purpose of visit. We asked about baskets; we were escorted through a narrow lane between two beautiful mud houses into an open courtyard. Beyond the courtyard, a cow was happily grazing on some dried grass, suddenly seeing unknown people in its frame, hurriedly got up and tried to escape. The slanting roofs of the mud houses had dung patties laid out to dry.
In the courtyard, a grandmother was massaging her grandchild in the sun. As word spread of our arrival, more people started pouring into the courtyard. One of the ladies stepped out of the house with baskets in hand. As soon as we saw the baskets, we all fell in love with them—beautiful natural colors blending into intricate patterns. When we asked if she had made them, Kamali Mausi beamed with pride. Manjulika, Kikina, and Sulachana soon joined, their enthusiasm lighting up the space. We asked them if they would show us how they weave them. After a lot of animated discussion, the Nalia grass was brought, and the ladies started to weave them together. As Soumya was busy taking photos of them weaving, Kikina Mausi asked me bluntly, “Why have we come here… To take pictures or to make reels?” Seeing my surprise, she explained: Earlier visitors had come. They roamed around a bit, shot some videos on their mobile phones, and left. “Everyone knows about Mayurbhanj and Sabai Grass craft, but no one knows about us,” says Kamali.
Demonstrating live, the ladies started with laying out strands of yellow Nalia grass under their feet and proceeded to intertwine them together. Slowly, they twisted softened stems into a tight rope-like core, then spiraled additional stems around it, stitching each turn with thin strips using a large needle. Sewing through the previous coil built strength as it expanded outward into circles, then angled upward for sides and handles. Soon, a shape of a basket emerged.
Both Sophie and I were eager to pick up the baskets which we had seen being woven in front of us. As we asked what price they would like to sell them to us, they kept looking at each other and whispering. As we repeated our question, we were told to give whatever ‘Dealer Mausi’ decides. I asked who she is? They pointed to an old lady sitting quietly in the corner. I was thinking to myself, why should Kikina’s earnings go to her. After some hesitation, I caved in, my curiosity getting the better of me, and asked why she was called Dealer Mausi and why should the money go to her? The ladies told me she was almost deaf, so we were fine talking about her. Dealer Mausi’s actual name was Jemmiya. At the young age of six, she used to walk to the Mangrove forest with her father and collect the Nalia grass. Once dried, her father had taught her how to weave them into baskets to use at home. After marriage, when she arrived at Manduki, she saw that the housewives had hardly any money in hand at the end of every month. She thought selling these baskets would bring them some extra income. So she went door-to-door, rallying the women and teaching them the entire process, starting from harvesting the sea grass from the mangrove swamps, preparing the grass, and weaving them into baskets. When they used to go sell the baskets, she was the most vocal, and everyone dealt with her. So the nickname ‘Dealer Mausi’ stuck.
Now only about 4-5 families in Manduki carry on the craft, mostly hidden from the world. In a good day, each lady can weave up to three baskets a day. “We source Nalia grass (Myriostachya wightiana, a salt-tolerant perennial from the Poaceae family) from both Devi River mouth and Kadua River mouth & wetland area. We collect only mature stems, sun-dry them for 1–2 days. Once dried, we sort them into uniform lengths, followed by a final soak to soften them for weaving,” says Sulachana. “The black borders are made from a rarer Kathia grass*, painstakingly collected from mangrove forests,” she adds. The conversation gradually turned more personal. The women spoke of a journey spanning decades, and Jemmiya, finally opening up and shared a memory that fell heavy on the courtyard. In 1999, she said, she and a few women from the village had crossed the Devi River mouth by boat to collect Nalia grass climbers from deep inside the mangroves. Unaware of the impending cyclone, they were working within the forest when the storm struck. As the winds intensified and the waters rose, local fishermen spotted them and rushed to their rescue. They survived—by sheer luck and timely human intervention. The cyclone, later remembered as one of the most devastating in Odisha’s history, claimed over 10,000 lives and left large parts of Jagatsinghpur and Puri’s coastal regions shattered.
“We have no agricultural land of our own. The baskets we weave are exchanged within nearby villages directly for rice, allowing us to secure food through barter rather than cash” says Sulachana proudly holding up a basket she has woven.For this community, the craft is not merely a tradition or livelihood, it is a quiet, enduring system of food security and dignity, sustained through trust, skill, and shared dependence. What we saw made us believe a little nudge from the government could easily turn Manduki & nearby villages into a thriving art cluster. These baskets are a testament of how we can still reverse the mass infiltration of plastic utensils, and the uniqueness of Nalia grass also ensures their durability. ** By the time we were ready to leave, Kikina Mausi’s gruff nature had mellowed down and she was genuinely sad to watch us leave.
* The grass itself bolsters the ecosystem, stabilizing soil against erosion and tidal currents, performing phytoremediation to filter pollutants, and creating habitats for fish and wildlife, ensuring biodiversity thrives.
** Nalia’s grasses’ lifecycle in these saline waters makes them much more resistant to molds and fungi, apart from the intrinsic strength of the fiber.