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Painted world of myth

Photo: Anna Dallapicolla, Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An epic scale: Scenes from the Ramayana on the Chirala Kalamkari canopy, circa 1881-82.

Winter in Jaipur. The sun falls softly and the early morning mist reveals birdsong. The Diggi Palace is a small, privately-run hotel in the heart of town and in its durbar hall is taking place a three day conference organised by Siyahi — a coll ective of literary minded personae who have banded together. Curated by Pramod Kumar K.G., the conference was in many ways a first of its kind and had a plethora of speaker-specialist-scholars from the field of Indian textiles of national and international significance. The yellow painted Durbar Hall of Diggi Palace was an appropriate setting, its Rajasthani arches painted over with intricate foliage and blue Chinese vases exquisitely drawn on its pillars with exfoliating vegetation accompanied by the mandatory birds. This beautiful setting was made alive by the constant coming and going of its resident pigeons.

There were papers of a large variety but I will concentrate on five of what I considered had scholarly depth and fascination. On the first day, Anna Dallapicolla, a scholar from Edinburgh who works with the British Museum, shared with us two rare Chirala kalamkari canopies depicting the Ramayana. They were very different from what we see today. Besides colorations, the imagery was also fascinating. While the outer registers paid obeisance to Ganesha, the Dikpalas and other deities, as the registers moved inwards towards the inner Medallion which had the coronation of Rama, they showed various incidents from the Ramayana. Unconnected but known to the audience that it was meant for, as they knew how to read the images. From stories of Shravana being wounded by Dasaratha, the story of Rishyashringa, the story of Ahalya, Rama killing Tataki, Rama meeting Parusuram and the Putrakameshti Yagna, these were beautifully rendered. However, some erotica had been cut up by Victorian collectors because it offended their sensibilities and these had been patched up in white rectangles. There was also an interesting discussion as to who these canopies were for. Could they have echoed the template of a temple that certain castes were not allowed to access and thus could pictographically imagine and partake of darshan in another manner?

Wendell Rodrigues, the fashion designer based in Goa, was a complete surprise. His paper was on the Pano Bhajo or the traditional skirt and blouse which evolved in Goa from the times of the Portuguese rule. Semi nudity and comfortable loin clothes, the baring of women’s mid-riffs and legs offended the Christian sensibility of the Portuguese and forced edicts slowly made people cover themselves in bed sheets and finally in a coat/blouse with long sleeves — the pano and a single pleated sarong called the bhajo. This influence was traced to Indonesia and Macau where the opium trade also flourished besides Goa. Today traditionalists use this as a ceremonial dress and for certain formal dance functions. Wendell also went into the dance and song traditions explaining the role of devadasis who smuggled temple idols from persecution, vandalisation and destruction. To hear a designer associated with fashion give such an in-depth paper was a real eye-opener. Wendell rounded off his talk, ending with jewellery accessories of the time as well as the details of the dances of Goa influenced by the French minuet and hilarious innuendoes used in their songs against the Portuguese about cannonballs et al.

Dr. B.N. Goswami’s talk was on the Chamba rumaal, the generic name for finely embroidered cloth coverings from the area of Guler, Kangra, Mandi and Basholi. He showed a series of miniature paintings of the Nala-Damayanti set in the collection of Dr. Karan Singh, where in the margin figures were embroidering these rumaals and using them to cover offerings. One of the finer points of these rumaals are they are totally reversible and that was brought to the audience in a typically Goswami moment with a literary reference to T.S. Eliot’s quotation “Translation is the reverse of an embroidery” — apparently Eliot had not encountered a Chamba rumaal! The scenes on these rumaals varied from auspicious symbols to scenes from the Ramayana and Krishna Leela. There was also a large vocabulary of vegetation and floral motifs. The question that Dr. Goswami asked was, what were these textiles communicating? There was a clear collaboration with the court painters who drew in outlines for the women who embroidered them. There were also portraits of a minor king sporting hunting theme (shikargarh), rumaals as sashes or patkas in miniature paintings. Collapsing story contexts, mixed messages and in many, the botany of the imagination filled the ground of these fine textiles.

Vaishnavite vastra from Assam and Northeast areas were then introduced by Rosemary Crill of the Victoria and Albert Museum. She had a robe shown to her by a family member in England who had inherited it and she traced this fabric of mystical religious use with fragments available in other museums. She was able to share her research by telling us that these were woven in Barpeta in the 16th or 17th century and were known as “gossain kapad’ or priests’ cloth. Nomghars or places of worship used these for their senior priests and they were rare and valuable enough to be traded with Tibet and China where they were used to line thangkas. Narrative is reduced to bands of patterns with themes from the avatars of Vishnu and stories from the Krishna Leela. They were preserved by putting in certain kinds of smoked bark and the red/white gossain kapad used today are its descendants.

Finally we had a talk on Namavalli textiles by Jaya Jaitley and Chandramani Singh. They talked about how the borders were woven or printed with auspicious chants and symbols. The newer versions were the yellow printed textiles used by tourists and hippies today. Auspicious versions for new brides printed with the blessings of a long sumangali-hood now have “welcome” woven in. Since use has reduced and context has changed, fewer and fewer quality Namavallis are being produced or used.

A session on the last day with designers Raghavendra Rathore and Namrata Joshipura talked about the inspiration from these textiles of tradition and how they could be responsibly readapted. It was heartening to see this attitude of respect to a craft and traditional symbolic sanctity being accorded by young designers who admitted they had to play to the market. This was a great relief, considering on the previous day the grande dame of Indian design Ritu Kumar after showcasing her classic pieces from the 1980s had shown a coat embroidered with Swarovski crystals but with a figure of Shrinathji, the Lord of the Pushti Marga. She had then cut up this image and made it into a quilted jacket. An interesting discussion ensued where the majority of the audience felt this was a highly irresponsible move on the part of the designer.

The sessions ended with a discussion with Lord Meghnad Desai, the economist and Dipankar Gupta, the sociologist where Desai bemoaned the death of the textile industry in India due to the short sightedness of the Baburaj and the fear of foreign capital and argued that by keeping that out our textile industry died a natural death. However, he did not look at the context that at the same time there was a textile crisis the world over. Gupta gave hope by saying that citizenship as a primary narrative has to be the change agent if we are to assimilate the millions of marginal craftspeople and textile experts all over the country. After three days of entering exotic embroidered, woven and printed fantasy lands this was an excellent ending of realism. The conference was organised extremely professionally and the side events were as colourful as the textiles displayed.

What the participants take back with this exposure and engagement and proceed to do within the years to come will be a true measure of its larger long-term effect.

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