Every day is koodai day now

Growing up in a railway town in West Bengal with a rather substantial Telugu population, there was one object that I’d spot everywhere—in the hands of women arguing about onion prices in the badly stocked shop near home; jammed in front of Bajaj Chetak scooters like squat, sturdy children; sitting next to steel S-type chairs in the administrative block of the South Eastern Railway offices where my mother worked. In my grandma’s strange home on a dusty clearing on the other end of a firefly-lined lane (not making this up), a work-in-progress specimen would sit on the edge of the Rexine couch, the stiff plastic wires at the edges standing up like startled weasels. There was no grand name for it. It was simply ‘wire butta’, or ‘wire basket’. (Ammama’s finished product would cradle her wool bundles that would slowly unspool when summoned by the steel knitting machine whining metallically above them.)

The aforementioned basket woven out of flat plastic wire is what we now recognise as the koodai, the name by which it is known in Tamil Nadu. And it’s now everywhere. Look around the office and there’s a chance a coworker is carrying their lunch in one. (There are a dozen in The Nod offices alone.) An indispensable part of the lives of women in all the states of southern India, it’s surprising that their pan-India presence took this long—they’re structured, water-resistant, sturdy, colourful, come in a multitude of patterns, from Madras checks to cross-stich-like roses (even with hearts, dolphins and charms), and they’ll outlive you.

For homegrown brands specialising in the koodai, the entry point hasn’t so much been a business decision as a way to create opportunities in the immediate community, express pride in—and revive—a regional art form, and give concrete shape to nostalgia.

Chennai-based Mirnalini Venkatraman, founder of Wire Kadai, is surprised by the recent craze for a utilitarian object that’s been around for decades. “I genuinely don’t understand all this,” she says. “When I started it in 2023, it was in memory of my mother whom I lost that year. We always used to have baskets at home made by this lady named Pushpa. After my mother passed away, Pushpa akka came home with a bunch of baskets asking if I could help. And that’s when we were like, how many baskets can I buy or gift?” Like you and I, Venkatraman too was shopping on Instagram, so it seemed like a viable platform to sell Pushpa akka’s designs.

Unlike a lot of koodai retailers, Wire Kadai was initially specialising in a form of koodai called tape koodai, where the outer visible wire is knotted over a tape framework running inside. The tape koodai is thus heavier, as stiff as a cane basket, more durable, and—for all the aforementioned reasons—a bit of a nightmare to pack and transport. Slowly, more women who lived in Venkatraman’s neighbourhood who needed a source of income but also the flexibility when it came to output volumes and work hours were trained, and the brand’s offerings expanded to the regular (non-tape) koodai. Now alongside traditional koodai shapes you’ll find poo koodai (flower baskets), mayyil (peacock) koodai, and designs featuring Madras checks in all colour combinations.

They do custom pieces too. “Sometimes customers would have seen something that we did on our page and say, can you please repeat this particular pattern? So, we started doing simple things like adding a press lock inside the koodai, an outer lock, a zipper, or a lining, or a tighter knot to keep the contents of the bag hidden…”

Venkatraman is happy with the koodai’s renewed popularity beyond its original geography, though also a little wary. “I’m waiting for a Prada-like thing to happen,” she chuckles. (She’s referring to the Prada Kolhapuri fiasco and the furore over cultural appropriation it generated.)

You’ll find totes from Laya Krishnaraj’s brand Koodai Kadaii even in boutique shelves in Japan, Portugal, Australia, and Malaysia, thanks to fans of the brand who discovered them here and took them back with them. “The koodai has evolved so much,” Krishnaraj says. “Personally, I’m going to keep pushing the boundaries on what designs we can come up with…”

At Koodai Kadaii, this pushing of boundaries has come in the form of a tote silhouette; they’re the first brand to tweak the traditional wide-base koodai to a more slender, taller shape that you can carry to the farmers market but also to the office as a laptop bag or to the beach. While the Madras checks are popular, a signature motif here is a giant heart motif in the middle of the bag. Want a little feline paw print on your bag? They’ll make one for you. You’ll also find totes with charms.

It was in November 2022, during a stroll through the Police Museum in Egmore, Chennai, when Krishnaraj chanced upon koodai made by the women at the Institute of Mental Health. The pieces made a strong enough impression to inspire a tie-up with the institute. Slowly, the weaver base widened. Today, Koodai Kadaii has over 50 artisans working in units in Tamil Nadu as well as Karnataka.

“Baskets, in general, exist across every culture in the world—whether that’s Asia or Europe or Africa—everyone has a style of making baskets and it’s often with local materials. These wire baskets are called koodai in Tamil, but they’re also a very popular form in Karnataka, where it’s called wire butti,” points out Bengaluru-based Chaitra Shantaram of Courtyard Craft Company.

Shantaram, who runs a farm and whose husband’s grandmother is a skilled koodai weaver, once asked her to make a few for a farmers market in which she was participating. While trying to photograph the 10 or so pieces on their lawns, curious neighbours started enquiring if they were selling them. Shantaram made more, and it burgeoned into a full-fledged entrepreneurial venture with standardised sizes and colour combinations.

“People really love handmade products, but what sets you apart is if you can finish it nicely—when the ends are not jutting out, there are no pokey bits, or you’ve used nice material. It’s the same reason you’re drawn to clothes or shoes that are finished well. You also have the luxury of customising because it’s handmade. So, if someone were to say they wanted a pink bag, you can tell them, I have four shades. Which one would you like? And that obviously goes a little further in making them feel happy about their purchase.”

The personalisation goes beyond colour. “I check with the person about who’s going to use the bag, how and how much they use it… If there are children carrying it, I ask how tall they are. All this just helps me make the bag a little more suited to that person.”

There have been all sorts of surprises along the way. A mutlicoloured koodai made with the odd lengths lying around in a bid to reduce wastage turned out to be a lot more popular than envisaged. Another day, someone at the pickleball court saw her koodai and approached her, enquiring if she could make one for them too.

For Raajadharshini KK of The Manjapai Collective, the koodai is part of a larger dialogue her brand is initiating on the objects and artifacts rooted in history but which tend to be derided or “ridiculed” due to their sheer ubiquity. Their titular product is, of course, the manja pai—the yellow-and-red cotton cloth that is an intrinsic part of Tamil culture; their versions come with prints of the kolam and the tea kadai, or tea stall.

A CSM graduate and fashion photographer who shuttles between London and India, Raajadharshini started The Manjapai Collective in 2019 with her sister. “The koodai has been a part of the lives of Tamil people for a long, not just in Tamil Nadu but also Sri Lanka. Anything that’s designed in India tends to get looked down upon initially. We wanted to re-contextualise the whole idea of what the koodai means—as not just something in which people carry lunch or use every day but to also expand its scope and decentralise it and take it from one community to more women so that they can earn a regular income.”

Content creator and actor Ahilyaa Bamroo, who grew up in Puducherry, is a fan of the bag—her blue ‘Pondy’ version is from Koodai Kadaii. “What drew me to the koodai is that it’s an iconic bag that I’ve seen growing up. Tamil women, since I was a child, have been sporting this bag in different colours and shapes and sizes. Growing up I would see women on the sides of the street weaving them; it’s all done so swiftly and beautifully… It was just perfect.”

She views the pan-India popularity of the koodai as a good thing if a person carrying it gets the context. “I like that regional crafts and handicrafts from India can travel pan India and become popular across the country. So, I think if you’re aware of where your bag is from, the real women behind them, and the history in these bags, then I’m definitely in support of people across India sporting it. It’s a wonderful way to bring colour into your wardrobe, which is such a quintessential Indian thing, but which is also very particular to Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.”

In our consumerist culture and consequent guilt, words like sustainability are bandied about as panacea. The koodai makers tread with caution when choosing what labels they want to go with. This is a business rooted in a slow, handmade process, creating a sustainable business model that involves skilling futures artisans and upskilling those who already know the craft. The wires are made of plastic, yes, but one koodai will last you longer than any piece in your bag wardrobe.

The koodai represents the handmade—an analogue artifact in the age of screens. It’s tangible heritage that carries your gourds and potatoes, your office lunches, your MacBook one day, and your Havaianas and Banana Boat tube over the weekend. Something old living a new life entirely. What are you stuffing in your koodai?