THE BASKET WEAVE

BASKET-WEAVING

An intricate art of Goa

(Line art-work drawing by Tony Fernandes)

For an enlarged view please click on the drawing.

        Along one of the major and busiest highways in North America, called the 401, is a mind-boggling inter-woven set of road network system aptly called the 'Basketweave' that feeds the collectors/feeders into and out of the major highway, north of Toronto in Canada. If you miss negotiating in or out of the appropriate lane leading to your destination at one these weaves, it would mean something else to get back on track and a different story altogether.

        But this basket weave in the drawing above is just an another version of the interesting bamboo basket-weaves that are made in Goa, intricate in its unique structure and construction itself, and just as crafty and artistic, painstakingly hand-woven into varied patterns in different forms, shapes and sizes.
       
        In Konkani (language of the Konkan in Western India) these functional baskets are known as 'panttli' or 'panttlo' in the singular, or 'panttleo' in the plural form, made professionally by a certain class of people for generations. The 'panttli' is bigger, shallower and has a wider bottom, whereas the 'panttlo' is taller, narrower and smaller.

        Interesting to note though, that in Konkani, the language of the people of Goa, the former is referred to in the feminine gender and the latter in the masculine. The plural for 'panttli' is "panttleo" while the plural for 'panttlo' is "panttle". Mind-boggling? Yes, perhaps, just like the highways of North America.
       
        The portion of Highway 401 passing through Toronto is one of the longest (817.9 km/508.2 mi) from Windsor to the Quebec border, the widest and busiest in the world just like the special tribe that weave the complex basket patterns in Goa.

In the aerial view shown above, the basket weave roadway facilitates the switch-over of traffic from the Collector Lanes to the Express Lanes (and vice-versa) of Ontario Highway 401, for both eastbound and westbound lanes. This is just east of the Jane Street overpass, west of the Highway 401/Keele Street Interchange, in North York (Toronto).