The venue, Whispering Stones, looks like an art & craft class in progress. Colourful papers trail the ground, sketches are being put up, handmade baskets, candles, cosmetics, baby clothes lie pell-mell. Fabric, food, stationery and trinkets spill out of cartons. The Crafters Market has just opened for business.
It is unusual to find a man in a crafts bazaar, but the guy in a quiet corner, calmly arranging something in a basket is Silesh Ethiraj, one of the organisers. His day job is textile business, but he wanted to gather like-minded people and provide a platform for them to showcase their hobby. So, there are people in the bazaar who hold important day jobs but whose hearts also beat for art and craft.
“For me, personally, craft is a stress buster. I painted as a child and my family is quite creative, so may be it is in my genes,” he says. Silesh designs handmade cards with animals and birds on them besides impressions of leaves that have been dyed in coffee and tea decoction. He also has lungis that he has printed with tiny cows. Very quirky, very cool.
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Silesh designed cards for a US store called Paper Source. “They were a bit hit, but they wanted large numbers. For me, it is a hobby and I want to keep it that way.” When his day is done, he likes to unwind with music and craft. He surfs the Net extensively for new designs. “I may not execute everything I see, but I would love to know what people are creating elsewhere in the world. After a day of dealing with truant suppliers, conferences and other business demands, nothing relaxes me more than being surrounded by my cutters, colours, and craft.” Silesh is planning a new venture that he calls Pilgrim. “It is my homage to design, a platform for my creative ideas in textiles. I come up with designs to print on fabric. I have shown them to a few garment suppliers.”
Dr. Manveen Kaur is a Dermatologist/Cosmetologist and a full-time mom and a house-proud frau. “I did art in school like all of us have, but only much later when I was in England did I take it up as a hobby. I suspect it was the English weather that drove me to it!” First she sketched ballerinas in charcoal and then moved on to water colours. “I picked up books, took a lot of photographs and sketched endlessly. Since I am not trained in art, everything takes longer. And each stroke is an experiment.” Manveen says that she is “zero in computers, knows less than nothing about the Internet and therefore wastes no time on social media. Nor television. My art is my soul food and it nourishes me completely. I do my creative work after 10 p.m. When I am painting or sculpting eggs (the other thing she does) there is nothing else on my mind. I am totally focussed. I don’t need any other meditation or Yoga.”
Nithya Doraiswamy loves spending time creating gift tags, notepads, etc. But her day job is quite something else. She holds several degrees including a PhD. She designs courses on research and writing, teaches MBA students and teachers and is a visiting professor. But right through all these academic accomplishments she has always dabbled in art. “My earliest efforts were putting stickers or making sketches in the margins of letters I wrote to my cousins in the U.S.” But soon when Nithya sent personalised cards out to her friends and family, they loved them. They wanted some too. Academics took up so much of her time that Nithya could not do much for a while. But after a stressful time involving studies, hospitalisation and loss of a parent and relocating to Coimbatore, she got back to doing craft. “I found it therapeutic. I wanted to do something that did not involve looking at a computer,” she laughs but says she would like to keep it only as a hobby. “I don’t want into get into working with printers, keeping to delivery schedules, etc. Monotony kills my spirit”. By the time breakfast is served, she has usually designed or created something new. She loves browsing the Net. She shows her craft work at small private gatherings and it is always sold out. “I also upcycle things.” “Pintrust is one of my biggest sources of inspiration,” she says. “I can lose myself in craft work.”
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