"Mair slid open the bottom drawer of the chest [...] When she folded back [the tissue paper] her first impression was of wonderful colours. Silvery blues and greens sprang at her, like a distillation of lake water and spring skies, with starbursts of lavender and vermilion flowers caught in the depths. She looked more closely and saw the intricacy of the woven pattern; the sumptuous curved teardrop shapes with curled tips, the ferny fronds and branched stems and tiny five-petalled flowers. [...] Mair shook out the layers of soft wool. It was so light that it seemed to float on the air."
That's a passage from Rosie Thomas's new novel The Kashmir Shawl
Mine was brought home from India at the end of the war by my uncle who was serving there with the Gurkhas. He gave it to my grandmother, and I don't know whether she ever wore it, but I remember it vividly from my childhood as, despite its being cashmere adorned with fine embroidery, it was used to wrap around throats or across chests - which had been liberally coated with VicksVaporub - whenever we had colds or flu! Frequent washing has seen its colours fade from the blues and greens I remember to the nacreous shades you can see today, and while for a long, long time I thought of it as just 'the Vick cloth', now I can admire and appreciate it for what it really is.
