Indian cotton and the stories it never stops telling

I landed in New York on a humid September morning with the burden of two suitcases—23kg each—and a jet lag that refused to loosen its grip. As I started to unpack, my fingers brushed against a white kameez. It had a faint smell of musk and camphor, carrying something sacred within its fold. I slipped into the white cotton kameez. As I dried my hair while trying to make sense of this new world for the next hour, I thought of the day I bought this cotton. It was seven years ago on the streets of Patna when my amma touched through several pieces of clothes to finally choose this one. After countless moments of “this is real” reassurances from the shopkeeper, she decided to pick it. Innumerable cold washes and multiple cities later, this cotton kameez made it to a foreign land. 

The Indian cotton is an archive of memories—of people, bodies, desires, and histories. Everyone finds a place in its endless embrace. Or perhaps, the Indian cotton chooses to embrace our lives. We simply find ourselves born in the same land as her. The cotton cradles us—our past and future, delicately spun by not one person or community but by our collective history of beauty and decay. The cotton nurtures the skin of a newborn, preparing us for the brutality of the world we slowly make our own. She is our first teacher of softness.

The presence of cotton in our lives has taught us to recognise it in an instant. She is ubiquitous, present in Mughal miniatures, the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, the coy heroines of Satyajit Ray, and, of course, our grandmothers meditating in their saris. She surpasses the thresholds of mortality and exists beyond us through the divine and the dead. The cotton takes the form of a shroud covering the body devoid of memory and life, kissing it the last farewell, but transforms herself into a sacred offering for the almighty. Indian cotton is the canvas of our artistry, but also a reminder of the fragility of our existence. In the labyrinth of her weave, we find life and death.

The grandeur of silk sings through the reds and the yellows of the weddings, but the silence of cotton is where our home is. She welcomes us back with a warm hug and pats us to sleep, quiet but never absent. We all remember picking up that one cotton shirt or kurta that we buy when we turn 19, the one that clings to us like a lover. It has been stained through Kathi rolls, lipstick marks, drops of chai, and countless beads of sweat in the Delhi sun. When I look back, I see cotton silently witnessing my life—through my first birthday away from home when I wore a chikankari kurta to a random bar in New York, my amma holding me in her arms in a green sari slowly covering my face with the pallu to let me sleep, a stolen lungi from my father’s cabinet on a hot summer night, or the sari gifted to my naani (maternal grandmother) for Diwali. My parting gift to a lover was a white shirt handwashed in cold water and generously sprayed with jasmine perfume from Madras. It was a promise of kindness, a peace offering.

WE LIVE THROUGH EACH OTHER 

Her inception isn’t just a journey of raw material to a wearable fabric. It is also a story of human rapacity—of power, violence, and capital. Cotton might be memory, but she is also hierarchy. The aesthetics of the Indian cotton is stitched with scars and tenderness. She remembers what we forget—the hands that pluck her flowers, the bloodied fingers that loom her, the ones that bring cotton to life. Her history is as dense and violent as her stretch to eternity, intrinsically connected to the human body and labour. The cotton absorbs, soaks, resists, and evolves. From the plantation workers in the American South to the Indian weavers whose caste shapes the loom, her creation becomes a form of silent rebellion of the people whose marginality breathes life into her. Cotton’s cruel past and her cultural tapestry are the two sides of the same coin, encapsulating the duality of human existence. To admire her beauty, the Indian cotton demands rage within our hearts.

She becomes one with the body even before being turned into a piece of clothing. We don’t just find her in our wardrobes, but also around us. She takes care of us in her various forms—the pillow that soaks our tears on a bad day, a freshly washed handblock printed bedsheet that embraces us, or the old blanket that is reminiscent of our childhood. It is almost impossible to separate the human body and cotton. To own cotton is to own history and to own many versions of ourselves that we shed away as life moves on. Our cotton gently nudges us to look inwards and asks us poignant questions about her creation and where she comes from. She is vast enough to wrap the whole world within herself, but also holds our bodies like the crescent moon in the hands of our creator.

I pen this essay in the same cotton kameez that holds the summer of New York in her palm, once dried under the Delhi sun. As I feel her on my skin, I think—what memories does this white cotton hold in her threads? How many hands has she been through for her to finally hang on my skin? With each wash, she lets her guard down and softens a little, almost like an act of love. 

“Hold on to me, my love. For you are me and I am you. You carry me, I carry you.” Today, I listen to her soliloquy.

This article first appeared in the October 2025 print issue of Bazaar India

All images: Harsh Aditya

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