Under the wide, welcome arms of Kalakshetra’s ancient trees stands master craftsman from Jaipur, Badshah Miyan, his hands deep in a bucket of blue dye. Around him, men and women soak white pieces of thin cotton in water, fold them diagonally and twist them into long ropes, tied intermittently with twine. Twist and tie, twist and tie, until the group falls into a steady rhythm. Every once in a while someone hands Badshah their piece to dye, pleased to learn from a man who’s won a National Award for his lehariya tie-and-dye sari of 32 colours, and is now working on a 150 meter-long turban with 150 colours that may soon set a world record.
At Kalakshetra’s four-day festival of textiles and crafts, ‘Niram Thiram’, Badshah’s Lehariya session opens the first of four workshops that will acquaint participants with the traditions of ajrakh dyeing (taught by Sufiyan Katri, a 10th-generation practitioner of the craft), batik (by Shakil Ahmed who learnt the art at 14 from his father) and kalamkari (from Charam Prabhakar, Kalakshetra’s chief artisan from 1998). Niram Thiram contextualises itself in Rukmini Devi Arundale’s belief that dance steps beyond movement, music, space and geometry, and into colour, textile, and weave, said director Priyadarsini Govind, at the Festival’s inauguration. Kalakshetra’s Craft Education and Research Centre too hopes to initiate new generations into professional weaving, starting with this festival.
“India is on a strong, exhilarating road to re-discovering its craft traditions,” said Jaya Jaitley, chief guest, former politician and ardent revivalist of India’s handicrafts with her national network of craftsmen Dastkari Haat Samiti. Through stories of craftspeople nationwide who’ve contemporised their cultural inheritances, and turned entrepreneurs to make their art economically viable, Jaya emphasised that “the idea of dying crafts” was merely lazy.
For instance, Jaya told of Shabir Ali Begh, a Pashmina weaver in his 30s, who’s begun a movement to incorporate women home-spinners into a male-dominated field, even learning from his daughter’s school books to further his cause. “We have with us the legacies of pioneers in craft preservation such as Kamala Devi, and Rukmini Devi; we only need to walk in their footsteps, refuse the compartmentalisation of arts, politics, economics…and join these broken links for a way forward.” It is this that Niram Thiram aims to do through its workshops, master craftsmen’s interactions with Kalakshetra’s students, a revival project of the Kodalikaruppur sari, and an installation-exhibition of 500 years of block and batik print in Kachchh, say the festival’s curators Annapurna M., Simrat Chadha, Durga Lakshmi Venkatswamy and Nalini Sriram.
The story of Kachchh’s ajrakh block printers begins in the Indus-Saraswati civilisation where the Khatri community of Sindh practised dyeing and printing in indigo. Oral history says the Khatri block printers were so attuned to indigo that “they could dip their finger in a pot of indigo, taste it and be able to tell its shade and quality”. In the 7th century, Arab invasions of their land forced them to migrate to Kachch, where for generations they made turbans, lungi and shoulder cloths for the Maldhari community of cattle herders, each family having its own private Khatri artisan. Time and the popularity of chemical prints have vastly morphed traditional ajrakh prints and this exhibition traces its evolution through posters and fabric samples, each with a detailed story of its craftsman, design history and colour story.
Niram Thiram’s highlight is a single Kodalikaruppur sari recreated by Charam Prabhakar’s team of printers and dyers. Originally hand-made only for Maratha ranis in Thanjavur till the 19th Century, the craft has since died a quiet death, and is resurrected now at Kalakshetra through an elaborate eight-stage process that first hand-traces the designs onto brocade, and then fashions blocks for it.
The sheen of the sari’s brocade shines through its deep black and red dyes, a soft blink-and-you-miss-it shimmer of gold through rich prints.
Niram Thiram is on at Kalakshetra till September 12
