My Tryst With Yoga

On the Sixth International Yoga Day, I feel I need to “pen” my thoughts and experiences with yoga. It’s been a long time since that first yoga class. I think I was in 9^th grade at the American International School, Delhi.  Our Student Counsellor, Dr Rolf Godon, had a visitor from the US, his brother who was a yoga practitioner or teacher even. And so in the capital city of India, the home of Yoga, the first Yoga class I ever attended, was by a foreigner!  Anyway, an introduction is an introduction. It was also a discovery, and a first-time discovery always lasts a life time, I believe.

It has in my case. Although it took me forever to find a teacher, a Guru, who I could relate to. I was a “bhatakti  atma”, a lost soul, a seeker, trying this yoga and that, different instructors, different schools. As a Senior in High School, I remember going off-campus to a place I had discovered near the school which was a sort of center for yoga. I went there a few times with two school mates, Marijana and Alison. I don’t remember what asanas we did, but I remember the meditation. In later years, when the turn came to try the Bihar School of Yoga I realized it was a form of Yoga Nidra.

In between, there were others: a young girl who had trained under the Swami , Dhirendra Brahmachari, who was said to be close to PM Indira Gandhi and was gifted a huge plot of land in the heart of Delhi to open a Yoga Institute. After his death, it became  a Government-run Yoga institution and still is.  Dhirendra Brahmachari also had a Yoga School in Katra.  I remember on one of the family’s annual pilgrimages to Vaishnodevi passing by it and toying with the idea of hmmm! enrolling there but not even attempting to speak out loud – I knew the parental response in advance. However, I think it was more the ‘bulava’ (the call, as in an invite!) of Mata Vaishnodevi  than Yoga which elicited the thought in my mind.

While working at the French Embassy, post-JNU, I enrolled at the Taj Palace Fitness Club. There I met the duo, Mrignaina and Lakshmi. Lakshmi offered to help me with Yoga which I preferred to the machines in the Gym, although I tried those as well. It turned out that she was an Iyengar Yoga practitioner so I always consider her to be my first Iyengar instructor.  One day I was shocked at not being able to do the Halasana. She pulled up a stainless steel bench and placed it behind me, made me hold its legs, had me up in Sarvangasana (Shoulder Stand) and brought my toes onto the bench in Halasana. That was my first experience with the props Guruji had invented but of course I didn’t know that then.

Lakshmi also taught me, very significantly when I reflect on it with the passage of time, the Sirsasana (Head Stand) against a wall corner. I obviously had the confidence of youth  to do it with her and at home on my own…till the day someone said to me “Young women should not do the Sirsasana”. And from that day till today I have not been able to do it independently and without support. My toes refuse to lose contact with my foundation, Mother Earth. I am totally earth bound and frightened, I guess , of losing myself and floundering in space.

There’s a tennis club near our house and I used to go there on early summer mornings to learn tennis. Later on, there were yoga classes there from Kaivalyadham Center, Lonavala.  They had promised us they would be there “every day, every week, every month, every year” for us but in fact that promise lasted just a few months.  Yoga sessions were held outdoors at 6 am daily. I recall not being able to do the Vrikshasana (Tree Pose) even then for want of balance. Over the daily repetition, I found a modicum of balance with the sole of one foot pressed just above the ankle of the opposite leg. We were instructed to look at eye level and focus on an object there in the not too far distance. We had bushes in front of us, of the chandni flower.  I found a white flower to focus on but every time that flower died, I would have to not just find a new focus but my balance all over again.

I started going for walks to the Rose Garden, just off the Hauz Khas Village at one extremity and the IIT Delhi at the other.  There I would see a group doing Yoga and I knew some of the members so I joined in and we did group yoga, once again outdoors, in an open park, under a grove of Neem trees, because the neem keeps mosquitoes at bay. But we always got badly bitten.  We found an instructor and he was good. One winter morning, he showed us a vigorous shoulder rotation to fend off cold. It warmed us up but I still would not want to be in a glacial ambience to experiment its viability. A Delhi winter morning was enough. But the instructor moved on and the group continued to do yoga as we did pre-instructor but decided to include Laughter Yoga into the daily practice!  This Laughter Yoga was doing the rounds in those days and becoming very popular. In any park, you could hear loud group laughter and you knew what was going on.  Except our Laughter Yoga started taking a different turn, and imitating the laughter of different animals was not my cuppa Yoga and I had to carry on.

For a couple of years I had an instructor come home to teach. She had trained under the system of the Bihar School of Yoga and that’s when I revisited Yoga Nidra.  It was probably the first time I started familiarizing myself with a regular sequence for a daily practice.

I got into a discussion with a friend’s nephew who was doing Yoga regularly and he convinced me to join a two-week workshop of the Bihar School of Yoga.  It was fairly intense and informative as well.  That’s the time I started reading their publications and through them familiarized myself with the original Sanskrit names of some of the asanas.

So with this, my practice was more regular but I also knew for it to continue I needed a regular class. So after another gap of a few years I found myself practicing in a group led by an instructor from the Mysore School!  I was almost done with all the Schools offered in India.  Somewhere sometime there was an instructor from the Sivananda discipline as well but now memory fails me.

But there was still one more left and it found me, at last. I knew about Guruji, Yogacharya BKS Iyengar and his center in Pune. I had bought his seminal book, Light on Yoga, in the early 80s. I tried doing asanas from it and once, in over enthusiasm, painfully overstretched the hamstrings.  It’s a book one should read from start to finish and then once more before considering it to be one’s Guru. An instructor’s face to face guidance goes a long, long way in understanding the correct technique and to prevent wear and tear to the body.

I had expressed the desire to learn yoga in Pune but I was told Guruj is so strict and severe, he hangs his students from the ceiling fan…those words exactly. That was enough for me to get the thought out of my head. So how did I get caught in the web of Iyengar Yoga…

While I was doing the classes a la Mysore School, we had a visiting instructor, Rudra, whom we called Swamiji, and who had ashrams in Rishikesh and Karnataka. He was an Iyengar disciple, more specifically, Guruji’s disciple. He brought into my life a new way of doing Yoga . With my friend Sumana, who started visiting his ashram in Rishikesh for 2-week workshops twice a year, I made two short visits and followed his classes while I was there. The teaching was very different and it was deep.

I was in the US when I got a brief email from Sumana: “BKS Iyengar is going to give a talk at the IHC. Will you be back?”  It was well-timed, yes, I would be back. We went to hear him and it was fascinating. Rudra had come down from Rishikesh. It turned out Guruji was in Delhi to inaugurate the first Iyengar Centre which was opening the following day. Rudra was going for the inauguration ceremony and vigorously encouraged Sumana and me to accompany him. We were only too delighted with the invitation. It was an official event, the opening of Iyengar Yogakshema. Later, we the tail-enders were taken for a tour of the center’s halls. They were beautiful as was the center itself.  I got an opportunity to speak to Guruji there, just a few words, but it felt like a blessing.

I was determined to join and left my phone number to be informed when classes began later in July. But before then,  Guruji had told Rudra to come for a short morning session he was having for the students already enrolled at Yogakshema. Sumana and I were roped in too and we, officially gatecrashers, had our first ever class with Guruji, unexpectedly!

I finally joined and the experience of the first class remains in my mind. I had done yoga, yes, it was usually the same sequence of 12-15 asanas, with a tweak here and there, but this was totally different. “What is this!” , said both my mind and body and the will to deepen my knowledge kept growing. I liked the scientific approach to the subject, I loved learning anatomy through yoga for yoga, Sanskrit (we were expected in the Iyengar tradition, to refer to the asanas in Sanskrit, so Adho Mukho Svanasana was no longer the Americanized Downward Dog) and of course, the classes, each one different from the last. We didn’t know what we were going to learn in the next class but it was always something new and the ways were new too. It was invigorating and I loved it.

My Vrikshasana (Tree Pose) has improved significantly with the help of the wall (‘The wall is your Guru!’, said Yogacharya Iyengar. With its support, I started raising the bent leg as high as it was required to go. I realized that was my ‘go to’ asana when the vritti of the citta (Yogasutra I.2 “Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodhah”) just would not stop. Aha. But when I focused on the Vrikshasana – to maintain the balance – my concentration within was obviously powerful because not only was I sthir there was also sukha in the asana {YS II.46 “Sthir Sukham Asanam”).

And there- Iyengar Yoga is where I have stayed in my yoga journey. I selected to move to a new center Iyengar Yogamandala, much closer to home but the discipline remains the same. There are new learnings, taught and those that are intuititive, based on personal experience of practice. I like the fact of pushing myself far enough to do an independent Sarvangasana (Shoulder Stand) now but still cannot get into the Sirsasana although the thought of it has me salivating always. I need more recovery and repose moments between certains asanas but I know enough to be less demanding on my older self. I know I won’t be in performance mode now, I will have to await another lifetime for that, but I am happy and content to just be in the asana of the moment.

There will be a Part II to this. Soon.

MARKING MILESTONES : Reminiscences Aug 15 2017

Goodbye 2016

9:15 pm New Year’s Eve 2016

 

I am finally sitting down to mull over the year that will soon be past tense.

One of the highlights of the year was discovering food-making. Cooking does not seem the appropriate word.  I have experimented with millets and made porridge, both hot and cold, salty and spicy or simply sweet. Bajre ki roti with methi (mustard leaves). Aaloo parathas, besan ka pura with coriander chutney and other favorite Punjabi dishes, just because I knew I had to be able to make what I love most. I am currently perfecting a non-Punjabi soup, my version of minestrone. So I give myself a nice pat on the back for that.

The first half of 2016 was calm, flowing past slowly as flows the Ganga in spring. Nevertheless, there was the unexpected windfall and “Bapu” came out of the closet and travelled to Visakapatnam (GITAM, Gandhi Institute for Technology and Management). My 2012 exhibition Bapu: The Craftperson’s Vision , is what I am referring to ! I love South India and I was pleased to accompany “Bapu” and pleasantly surprised by the city of Visakapatnam, on the south eastern coast of India, clean and well-maintained.

We went to the nearby beach every morning for sunrise and coffee (brew coffee here is the brand BRU. No filter coffee in those parts, I was astonished!) The sunrise each day was beautiful and I adjusted to strong Bru coffee too, to wash down the idli sambar from a roadside stand, and a banana for a good healthy choice.

 

We drove through and up the Naval area to reach the lighthouse and the drive itself was interesting, the view from the top of the hill all-encompassing and broad.

There was an old temple dedicated to Narasimha and it was another long and fascinating drive to the temple town and a visit to the sanctum sanctorum was a great way to end the trip.  I love antiquity …

In March I returned after four years to the International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh and vowed never to go again for the International Yoga Tamasha it has become. However, I did some good Iyengar yoga with Arunji from Bangalore and discovered the other Yoga Festival which takes place simultaneously had more Iyengar yoga offerings so maybe there will be another next time!

The highlight in Rishikesh was making young new friends and keeping up with them. Through them I discovered the delightful Ramana café and in return, introduced them to the profundity of the Vashista Gufa (cave).

I also vowed that I would not think of travelling for six months. Enough, I told myself for some unknown reason.

Within four months, there was talk of “Bapu” travelling once again, this time to participate in the Festival of India in Australia, and so it happened, a little over six months after Rishikesh I was once again accompanying “Bapu” , this time to Brisbane and having a solo khadi fashion show in Sydney. It was a wonderful bolt from the blue. “Bapu” was warmly received in Brisbane and it proved to be an excellent way to talk about him, his life’s work , the crafts of India and above all, khadi. Being in Brisbane gave me the opportunity to once again meet one of my young new friends from Rishikesh and also a young cousin.

 

 

I was pleased to show off Khadi in Sydney, I will happily show it anywhere in the world, talk about it and revel in it !

 

 

The day before I left Sydney, as I was having my early cup of coffee taking in the glorious sunrise, I rebuked myself for not having seen any kangaroos and I resolved to do just that. I went off to the zoo and saw them with their joeys, koalas and wallabies. What a wonderful heartwarming sight !

 

Back in Delhi, and fighting mild jet lag, I was ordered by my mother to the television on the night of Nov 8 to hear the Prime Minister announce DEMONETISATION! Oh my goodness ! I am glad we are fully demonetized as of yesterday, December 30. Enough became enough. Tired of hearing the word and living through it, seeing the long queues at banks of usually impatient Indians standing quietly, patiently, very often to be told the bank had run out of money. Anyway, it’s over. And migration to GST is done as well, today, the last day.

The last three days of 2016 have seemed longer than the rest of the year put together…so I’m not unhappy to see it end! Or happy either, come to think of it. Learning to go with the flow, am I? At last?

I was looking for worthy pix to take to post of 2016 ending. And yesterday I saw one as I emerged from the office of the telephone department. I was taking pix of vendors at the crossroads, selling multicolored balloons and then I noticed in front of me two young boys distributing food to the street kids. They were Engineering students  from Kolkata, interning for an NGO which distributes packets of food to street children in parts of Delhi daily and also includes some teaching as well.  I like being able to share these pix to end the year.

This morning driving to finish some work, I saw a group of women walking away from me on the flyover and I had to stop and take a pic of their retreating backs, just to record their colorful garments. As I took the photograph one of them turned to look back and they came toward me in the car, all smiling. I showed them the photograph and they were happy as was I, we exchanged greetings, smiles and a few chuckles before I drove off wishing them a Happy New Year.

(I call this pic “6 Deviyan”, the first of all Devis in the foreground, Mata Vaishno Devi who is omnipresent, yes, but is also resident in my car from which I took this shot!)

 

 

Tang Dynasty Welcome

I was hugely entertained to see on TV the “Tang Dynasty Welcome” for our PM in China ! Especially in context of the book I am currently reading, Valerie Hansen’s The Silk Road.  Coincidentally, the portion I had just finished was on the Tang dynasty .  Looking at the elaborate dances, numbers of dancers and their very colourful, voluminous garments set me off on a fun roller coaster ride of thoughts.

Firstly, what struck me was the quantity of fabric each one of those swaying, swishing, twirling dresses require ! The book does inform us that currency in the Tang dynasty consisted of grain, coins and silk cloth so we know that the technology to hand spin and weave the yarn into cloth (silk) was known at the time . (Had the wheel already been invented or was the fiber rolled on the thigh or on an overturned terracotta pot to produce the yarn?) But whether it was being produced in such large quantities as to fashion garments for dancers is an unknown .

At the same time, the author quotes a document that lists goods placed in a grave from an earlier period: “100,109,000 cubits of “climbing-to-heaven silk” “ but we are also told these exaggerated quantities are indicative that not actual goods but ‘facsimile textiles” were placed.

However, were the garments we saw pure handspun handwoven silk or synthetic duplicates !

And then the beautiful colors of the light floating silks.  We are informed that the silk fabric was ‘degummed’ to better absorb the dye and ammonium chloride was one of the many ingredients of the dye bath. So the dyeing technology existed already but such brilliant colors as we saw on our TV screens !

A photograph in the book of the  “Tang Barbie” gives us an idea of the high-fashion of that era, but the skirt no where as voluminous as worn by the dancers, the colors much more earthy!

As for those dance moves, I wonder how those have stood the test of time. We know for a fact no videography or photography existed at the time. However, we do have a photograph (much more recent !) of a painted stone panel  of men, one of whom is dancing, (the ‘swirl dance’) their clothes more form fitted than what they wear to depict the Tang Dynasty these days!.

The book includes other photographs of fascinating textiles discovered in excavations headed by the legendary Aurel Stein. Many are from the Sasanian Empire of Western Iran.

Today i went to Delhi’s national museum for an unrelated exhibition and later drifted into a gallery i have never visited, Coins and Central Asia.  What a revelation that right in my home town, in the heart of Delhi, close to home, i should see similar textiles, “wood slips” with the Kharoshti script and read of their provenance, towns and cities on The Silk Road, Niya, Loulan, Turfan…all written about in this very same book.

And finally, the last but not the least, in April, I managed to see before it closed, a show on Aurel Stein’s work, excavations and findings in Central Asia at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts.

All of these,  the book, today’s visit to the Museum, the Aurel Stein exhibition were separate happenings but closely and coincidentally linked one to another, and came together because of the Tang Dynasty Welcome !

Emergency , India, 1975

The current buzz in the media is 40 years since the Emergency in India ! Once again, I don’t want to be left out of the  buzz going around. Instead, I feel I must share a private citizen’s experience, mine, of the time. Apolitical as I was, I still had a few experiences to reminisce over.

In fact, I was not in India when it was declared and the clamp down started. I was away in the USA, having left immediately after graduating from the American Embassy School  so the few reports I got were from newspapers there and I have to admit, I was not much of a newspaper reader in those days, despite my mother coaxing me since my childhood to at least read the editorials .

What brought about this desire to share some thoughts was Karan Thapar’s interview with R K Dhawan on CNN-IBN and the question he  asked was if it were true that Sanjay Gandhi had slapped his mother, Indira Gandhi, at a party. Mr Dhawan denied this ever happened but this report was covered apparently in the Washington Post.  It made it into the paper we got at my Uncle Zeke’s home in New Jersey and I cut it up and mailed it to my parents, in those days of censorship, in Delhi.  When I sent it, I had no idea that censorship had been imposed else I may not have.

In those days, Sonia Gandhi used to come to my mother’s boutique, Raj Creations in Yashwant Place (which is now in its 48^th year, folks, still goin’ strong).  The next time she came, my mother just happened to have that article in her bag and handed it over to Sonia, saying “Read what the American press is saying about your mother-in-law”. She took it with her and my mother came home and narrated this happening to my father and some other family members who were visiting that evening.  Oh! How they berated her for having handed over that article ! She shouldn’t have done it, didn’t she know there was censorhip, watch out! They really put fear in my poor Mom’s heart.  But nothing happened.

I went on to study at Jesus & Mary College (till I dropped out 6 months later, yes, I was a drop out) and I recall how in the all-girl college suddenly the rumors were raging that girls in all colleges would have to wear salwar-kameez only.  I hadn’t worn a uniform since my days at Convent of Jesus & Mary , aged 6, so I was apprehensive but so were all the other students, who were so relieved to be out of their uniforms and attempting to evolve a personal sartorial style and traditional attire was far removed!  Fortunately, the rumors remained just that.

Again, at the boutique, I used to help my mother in case she couldn’t go for some reason and if the sales staff was absent.  News  went around that all stores in all commercial centers had to ensure every item on sale was price-tagged.   Apart from garments and textiles, we used to stock a lot of small items like bags and playing card cases, and many etceteras. One day at the boutique I took it upon myself to patiently price every single item(I also used to find it annoying not to know the prices  so that had something to do with it too).

Efforts like these are never wasted.  One day the cops arrived. At the threshold of the boutique, they took an aggressive and menacing stand before entering.  The head of the group said, “Keep the handcuffs ready”. (This is true.) Depending on where one entered Yashwant Place, ours was the first store. As soon as the news went around, the other stores started downing their shutters.  I was in the store that day with Dolly. The cops came in and checked the prices of many many items, including the small ones we kept in a cabinet.  Every garment, every bolt of fabric, the smallest of item was tagged. Disappointed, I suppose, one of them turned to the table fan and asked, “Why doesn’t this have a tag?” I was courageous enough by then to betray genuine annoyance when I replied, “It’s not for sale”. He wanted the last word. “Then tag it not for sale”.  I remember the cops coming twice in my presence, this once and a second time too.

I remember my mother being in a state of disbelief that I had tagged everything without her knowledge. There were so many things in the fairly large space we had then (I wish I had that kind of space today).

My cousin had invited me over for a party at his house in Golf Links and in those days, our parties didn’t end late and he was supposed to drop me home.  So when it ended he, accompanied with a friend of his, and myself, we walked to Khan Market to get an autorickshaw.  Again some cops hanging around, waiting to harass. “Who is she she?” My cousin: “My sister”. “Where are you going?” Cousin: “To drop her home”. “If she’s your sister, why do you have to drop her home?” I finally found my voice and spoke up: “Cousin bhi to ho sakti hai”. (I’m a cousin). Cop: “Okay, go”.  How could one feel safe?

Once we were sitting at the Taj Mansingh’s popular coffee shop Machaan, and a discussion started over politics, but I remember we quickly shut up, the walls had ears.

Later studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University, hub of political activism, our professors never let us out early. “Emergency”, they would reason.  For some reason, despite being at JNU, I didn’t get involved with the politics of the time. We were School of Languages students, the under-grads no one paid attention to, very young, probably, and uninformed. Looking back I wish I had but there are lots of programs on TV and articles in the print media as well have books released to coincide with this anniversary. It’s time to refresh my memory !

International Yoga Day

International Yoga Day has come and gone and there are 363 days till the next one, but the ‘controversy’ continues to rage thanks to the media, the real news makers.

Despite the naysayers, the nationalists, the politicians the communists, the religionists, conscientious objectors , and so on and so forth, the event went off wonderfully well not just at Rajpath (we shall call it “Yogpath” henceforth!), the Guiness-Book-Record-setting venue (+35000 people!), but pan-India, Yoga Day was celebrated with an asana practice by large numbers.  What a great show it was.  If the message of Yoga has gone across to the huge numbers of our population, it will have been well worth the effort. I’m sure many amongst them will be curious to learn more and start to practice.  So what could be better. I hope there are some positive after effects which halts the naysayers in their tracks. Enough is enough. Leave Yoga out of politics and religion please.  Just do it, as is said.

Now we all know what it means, yoga from the Sanskrit ‘yukt’ means to yoke, to unite, a union of the mind, body and soul. If it can unite us all in India,(I’m thinking “Unity in Diversity”, those famous words) we will have added another dimension to the force of yoga.  Unity in Oneness.

The on-the-spot energy at Rajpath must have been tremendous and a good job that the PM strode across to find his mat placed squarely in the front to lead the nation in its first mass Yoga ‘class’.  It could not have been otherwise with the whole world looking on. Like a journalist has written, it was  quite cool to see, a rare sight, the PM of India, wriggling his toes –all ten of ‘em – on live television, bending , twisting and lying down in the series of asanas named the Common Yoga Protocol !

We Indians love celebrating festivals and to me it looks like we just got another one to add to our already long list.

Instead of focusing on reclaiming Yoga from the West or spreading it in all four directions globally, (it’s so well established all over the world in any case) let’s concentrate instead on us Indians practicing it , within our country, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Gujarat to the North-East and everywhere in between.  All we need is a mat and sometimes not even that. “Press down firmly the middle finger and the thumb to avoid slipping” said Guruji, BKS Iyengar through his granddaughter in Pune during a class I was observing.  There were so many practitioners in the hall, the mats had to be removed to make space for all. Oh yes, indeed. Guruji must be delighted and smiling down at what was happening countrywide and worldwide on Sunday June 21.  I’m sure that was his hand raised in salutation and blessing to all of us !

My only disappointment was over the fact that I didn’t receive an invite to practice at Rajpath but I won’t cavil too much over it!  Next year let’s keep Rajpath open for one and all to come with their mats and do some Yoga together. Till then, keep practicing, folks. It’s the best daily vitamin shot you can give yourself ! Happy Yoga to one and all !

Hauz Khas Village, once again !

Hauz Khas Village is now a fashion observer’s delight.  Given the multitude of visitors it attracts on Saturday, today was an apt day to be on the lookout.

There was no  visible trend , instead a variety of tops n bottoms, casual, let’s-keep-our-cool kind of clothes to combat the May heat.

Smart, printed cotton top in cool blues paired with fashionably-torn-at-one-knee jeans, ill-fitting mini skirt with printed shirt tucked in to reveal a not-so-pretty paunch and dangerously high-heeled footwear in Indian pink.

Turquoise nail paint embellishes toe nails peeping through open high platform sandals, ankle-length bias cut kurta – the churidar barely peeping out below it, the dupatta trails behind sweeping the street behind it. Chunky jewelry and inexpensive plastic sandals in fluorescent colors, kulfi-eaters and nitrogen ice cream, music filters down from a restaurant, a gaggle of jeans-clad teenagers excitedly share their news and gossip.

Most interesting of all, a young woman is helped out of the car, blindfolded! Obviously she’s in for surprise, as we can make out from her smile. Her friend holds her to prevent a fall, balancing precariously on her stilettos braving the uneven road ahead, holding a long-stemmed rose in her hand. Ahead of her, another friend with what must be the cake box. I do hope the birthday girl was happily surprised!  This was a first for most of us who saw her.

Amusing musings

I was hugely entertained to see on TV the “Tang Dynasty Welcome” for our PM in China ! Especially in context of the book I am currently reading, Valerie Hansen’s The Silk Road.  Coincidentally, the portion I had just finished was on the Tang dynasty .  Looking at the elaborate dances, numbers of dancers and their very colourful, voluminous garments set me off on a fun roller coaster ride of thoughts.

Firstly, what struck me was the quantity of fabric each one of those swaying, swishing, twirling dresses require ! The book does inform us that currency in the Tang dynasty consisted of grain, coins and silk cloth so we know that the technology to hand spin and weave the yarn into cloth (silk) was known at the time . (Had the wheel already been invented or was the fiber rolled on the thigh or on an overturned terracotta pot to produce the yarn?) But whether it was being produced in such large quantities as to fashion garments for dancers is an unknown .

At the same time, the author quotes a document that lists goods placed in a grave from an earlier period: “100,109,000 cubits of “climbing-to-heaven silk” “ but we are also told these exaggerated quantities are indicative that not actual goods but ‘facsimile textiles” were placed.

However, were the garments we saw pure handspun handwoven silk or synthetic duplicates !

And then the beautiful colors of the light floating silks.  We are informed that the silk fabric was ‘degummed’ to better absorb the dye and ammonium chloride was one of the many ingredients of the dye bath. So the dyeing technology existed already but such brilliant colors as we saw on our TV screens !

A photograph in the book of the  “Tang Barbie” gives us an idea of the high-fashion of that era, but the skirt no where as voluminous as worn by the dancers, the colors much more earthy!

As for those dance moves, I wonder how those have stood the test of time. We know for a fact no videography or photography existed at the time. However, we do have a photograph (much more recent !) of a painted stone panel  of men, one of whom is dancing, (the ‘swirl dance’) their clothes more form fitted than what they wear to depict the Tang Dynasty these days!.

The book includes other photographs of fascinating textiles discovered in excavations headed by the legendary Aurel Stein. Many are from the Sasanian Empire of Western Iran.

Today i went to Delhi’s national museum for an unrelated exhibition and later drifted into a gallery i have never visited, Coins and Central Asia.  What a revelation that right in my home town, in the heart of Delhi, close to home, i should see similar textiles, “wood slips” with the Kharoshti script and read of their provenance, towns and cities on The Silk Road, Niya, Loulan, Turfan…all written about in this very same book.

And finally, the last but not the least, in April, I managed to see before it closed, a show on Aurel Stein’s work, excavations and findings in Central Asia at the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts.

All of these,  the book, today’s visit to the Museum, the Aurel Stein exhibition were separate happenings but closely and coincidentally linked one to another, and came together because of the Tang Dynasty Welcome !

Khadi is August, August is Khadi

Khadi is August, August is Khadi

 

As Independence Day 2014 draws near, my thoughts once again go towards the momentous events which led up to August 15 1947, both the joy and the pain, the exuberance as well as the anguish.  It’s a moment in our history which I am familiar with through the poignant narratives of my parents and the extended family, displaced from their homesteads in Lyallpur and Lahore,  and through newspaper archives and short stories such as  Manto’s. .  Over the years, I used to wonder what canvas I would one day use and how,   to express my own feelings, my deep emotions of elation, gratitude and despair as well  hat spring from these historic events.

And it’s come to me in a flash, that I have been doing just that through my work as a designer working with the wondrous handmade textiles of my beloved country,  and above all, my most cherished, khadi, which in my eyes, embodies the freedom movement, satyagraha, sacrifice, patience, peace and evokes the toil of the humble artisans who continue to handspin the yarn on charkhas or taklis before they weave it into the fabric that some of us love, others disdain and the third front , of those who are indifferent to it.

Independence Day is a day for reflection,  so why not share some of my thoughts on khadi. It is my personal view, as a self-professed “khadian”,  that khadi’s historic  and socio-economic significance is  immense even today and I hope that it is nurtured by every caring Indian.

First and foremost, India is the only country which produces  fabric which is not just handwoven but more importantly in my eyes, handspun as well,  on this large cottage industry scale.  The numbers of artisans who are involved in this activity is huge. They are not just the craftspeople, they are the true designers who remain anonymous and usually, grossly under-remunerated for the kind of labor they put into every inch of khadi.

A takli in the National Museum indicates spinning activity in Mohenjodaro, 5000 years ago. The spinning wheel is believed to have been invented in India between 500 and 1000 AD.

Before the Industrial Revolution, underlined by  the invention of spinning jennies and mechanized looms which decimated India’s textile industry ( The Governor of Bengal, Lord Bentinck, is quoted as having said “the bones of Indian weavers were bleaching the plains of India.”),  all cloth was  produced by handspinning the yarn and then weaving it.  Cloth in India had multi-purpose use apart from garments: tents, wall paintings, bedspreads, floor covers, decoration for animals, canopies for bullock or camel-drawn carts, silks woven with gold threads for temple offerings to the gods. And all of it, astonishingly, spun by hand.

With the coming of the East India Company, the demand for Indian textiles increased so greatly in England that a ban was imposed in the 1700s on the use of calicoes and chintz as clothes and home furnishings thereby protecting British interests from foreign competition.

One man’s vision, Mahatma Gandhi’s, led to the revival of a practically extinct craft firstly for socio-economic reasons , and then to khadi becoming  a mass movement and a non-violent  weapon through the  freedom struggle.

India is blessed with craftspeople who are still willing, in this Instant Age, to perpetuate this age old craft, a symbol of continuity with the past and our history.

The fact that the handspinning activity continues today is what makes my India Incredible and Shining to me.

Khadi has a very constructive role to play at the center stage of fashion today: it is environment friendly and a natural fiber.  The fact that its production from beginning to end is entirely handmade, lends it a mystic appeal.  We in India are so accustomed to handmade products that our eyes are sometimes jaded. 

 However, I don’t know of any country other than mine which can “boast of a national fabric” as I wrote in an article on the eve of our 50^th anniversary of Independence,  and I look forward to a day which  we will dedicate to wearing and ruminating on the ideal of Khadi.

Shedding 2013, Heading into 2014

Shedding 2013, Heading to 2014

Time is moving us speedily into 2014, soon leaving the hurly burly of another year behind us. Each year is packed with events, both personal and at the macro level but 2013 has taught me that a balance is created somewhere along the way. So while my father had a stroke in mid-February which has left him bedridden since, a new baby arrived into the family warming our hearts and souls. In between I’ve had the opportunity to give talks about the journey of the embroidery project i have been working on with The Nabha Foundation since 2008. These talks have helped me put the project in a new perspective as I had to step back and analyze it from the beginning to the point we have been fortunate to reach.
Friends have been outstanding, reaching out in many different ways, creating a support system in ways so subtle that only I may be conscious of it! Many thanks to all.
I am ever grateful for the creative work our Boutique calls for, and especially the constant contact it entails with craftspersons in rural India. This has undoubtedly been the high point in my work through the years and my gratitude for the work of hands we find in India is boundless. We are blessed to have such talented craftspersons who are always willing to try out new ideas that we designers impose on them ! It’s been a fun journey. My mission now is to work with those crafts that I love the most, time is short! The last twenty years have gone past in a jiffy. No more time to lose !
First amongst them, of course, my beloved khadi. Whether it is the khadi of old or not, the yarn handspun on a traditional charkha (spinning wheel) , it is my first passion. I try to combine khadi with at least one more craft, either bandhini (tie n dye), chikan work (Lucknow), indigo, ajrakh block print, kantha, phulkari…Sustainable fashion. Responsible fashion. The concept works beautifully and stands out for its simplicity in the middle of the bling we see around us today in India. The obsession with bling is so rampant, that it is rightly said, India Shining…Now more is less. So just throw in that kitchen sink too, will you please with all the other elaborate embroidery and thank you ! The 21st century has heralded a change in Indian aesthetics, just wear a price tag, why bother with the rest.
No more New Year resolutions! No more burdening myself with promises to fulfil, just do what i want to do or have to do and take each day as it comes. Always easier said than done.
It looks like I will be ushering in the New Year with a newly discovered drink, Umeshu. What a delight!
Wishing all a Happy 2014 !
December 31, 2013, 11:05 pm