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WOMAN OF THE WEEK

"Kottans" and creativity

The past has a present, thanks to Visalakshi Ramaswamy, who has nurtured Chettinad craft traditions with rare commitment

HERITAGE CONSERVATIONIST Visalakshi Ramaswamy

Do you need a college education to excel in your field of interest? Visalakshi Ramaswamy is proof that you don't. She did her Matriculation and took courses at the Weavers' Services Centre and believes a lot of what she knows today comes from experience. Hands-on, she confirms, is the best way to learn.

Life for a long time was a beautiful home, friends and family. Husband passed away and she felt a vacuum in life. A close friend, consoled Visalakshi with a keen observation: she had marketable talent. She knew how to create living rooms that spelt elegance. People accepted her ideas on interiors.

"Why don't you go pro," her friend had asked. Visalakshi had demurred that she couldn't deal with customers, marketing was something she knew little of.

Eye for colour

However, she began to associate herself with DakshinaChitra. In the decade as member of its advisory committee, Visalakshi did the interior of the Chettinad model house, designed textile and lifestyle exhibitions, conducted workshops and helped produce craft objects. She also became aware she had an eye for colour, an innate capacity to identify objects of beauty and elegance. She could do up a sophisticated display at minimal cost. The Kandangi saris she put on show at Shilpi and Amethyst were sellouts. Visalakshi had found her area of work.

If being with DakshinaChitra opened a window for artistic opportunities, it also got her interested in documentation. For four years, she travelled to remote hamlets with photographer Muthuraman recording the lifestyle, architecture, rituals and crafts of her native Chettinad. Her documentation is now the definitive volume The Chettiar Heritage, which she co-authored with S. Muthiah and Meenakshi Meyappan. The significance of this work came to her in a jolt when she discovered that the exquisite handicrafts she had shot the first year had simply died down when the book was getting ready to print.

She couldn't sit back and watch a whole way of life being wiped out. She registered the M. Rm. Rm. Cultural Foundation that would revive, document and train people in her beloved handicrafts. The old generation of artisans was still around. But her mercantile genes told her that they would be persuaded to carry on their art only if they could find a livelihood in it. Profit had to be the incentive for the restoration of their crafts. She would start with the commercial revival of "kottans", the palm-leaf baskets her people had used for centuries.

It took her a year to find Nirmala, the teacher, another to train five women to think commercial, to weave and stitch for contemporary tastes and standards. She paid them a stipend and began to look for markets. After four years, 40 women from three villages strip palm leaves, use vegetable dyes and produce finely woven baskets, hand bags and bread trays and earn up to Rs. 1,500 a month. The Kottans won the UNESCO Seal of Excellence for its craftsmanship and environment-friendly techniques. Her next stop was Athangudi, a village famous for its beautiful hand-made floor tiles. Her foundation documented the process while Visalakshi helped design and market it in cities. A workshop the foundation organised trained 15 masons in the egg plaster technique, an effective method to preserve walls for posterity. The procedure will live on, thanks to the discovery of Ponniah Kothanar and the reports of his method.

On this list of documentation is the 100-year-old M.Rm. House in Kanadukathan, a fine specimen of a wonderful architectural, social, cultural tradition. Visalakshi got a team of architects to log in every detail — the pillars, beams, layout. Peep in sometime for the lifestyle exhibition of objects she has arranged and labelled in the attic.

The fallout makes Visalakshi particularly happy. The artisan families can now afford to keep their kids in school. The foundation has adopted the Keelayapatti School, building bathrooms and paying for an additional teacher. One of the trainees, Manimekalai has visited four countries to attend exhibitions and explain her craft to wide-eyed foreigners. Another is getting ready for a fair in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Students from Shrishti, NID and other schools intern with the foundation for project work.

From homemaker to heritage conservationist, it has been a voyage of discovery for Visalakshi. As she awaits her compilations to be published as books, she is planning a facility centre for craftspersons and a museum of Chettinad crafts. She has a list of arts she'd like to revitalise to meet her agenda — keep traditional crafts alive by turning them into income generating activities, make vanishing practices viable opportunities. It means travelling and work but Visalakshi isn't complaining. She loves working with people who are effortlessly creative.

GEETA PADMANABHAN

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