To find out, I took Sanjay’s passing suggestion far too seriously, perhaps foolishly so. I set off on a five-hour drive out of Delhi to the city of Jaipur, touted to be India’s design capital. En route, I realized that ironically, there is no equivalent word for ‘design’ in the Hindi language. The closest word, shilp, means ‘craft’, and for lack of such a word, the country’s premier design institute, the National Institute of Design, is officially called Rashtriya Design Sansthan in Hindi!1
It was 11 a.m. but still early in the day when I arrived in Johri Bazaar, the liveliest fashion market in the heart of Jaipur. I walked down the empty streets, imagining what they would look like in a few hours. Just then, a puff of dust blew into my eyes. A boy was sweeping a shop, sending dust on to the road two steps below and into my face.
‘Hey, take it easy, boy!’ I exclaimed.
‘Oh, you need to step aside,’ he said, looking up at me, broom in hand.
‘But why are you dumping all the dust on to the street?’ I asked, dusting off my face, perplexed that he was keeping his shop clean but clearly not caring about the street right outside.
‘Yahan bas aisa hi hai (this is how it is here),’ he replied, pointing to the large open drain at the crossroads close by.
‘Okay . . . so what are you selling in your shop?’ I asked.
‘Saris,’ he said.
‘What is so special about your saris?’ I asked, amused.
‘You see, none of our saris are simple. They have the most embroidery in the whole of Johri Bazaar,’ he explained, indicating the glittering ware-stacked floor to ceiling on all walls of his fifteen-square-metre shop.
By the time the sun was blazing down, crowds of pedestrians were swarming amid motorcycles laden with clothes strapped into large bundles, crammed horse carts, and an occasional loudly honking tempo. People would stop every few minutes to touch the silks and chiffons on the mannequins along the open shops. Adding to the cacophony, the shopkeepers were trying to entice the crowds, promising attractive prices for the textiles, saris and lehngas on sale. This was Lalji Sand Ka Rasta, Johri Bazaar’s main fashion street with a name as unique as its wares, and a sea of glittering chaos.
‘Can I see something without embroidery?’ I inquired at one of the larger sari shops.
‘Madam ji, without embroidery there is none,’ the salesman replied.
The garments sold here were mostly in silk, tissue, chiffon, kota cotton-silk, flashing bright colours with gold threadwork all over. The colour contrasts were not timid either—a deep red cropped blouse over a cream-and-gold lehnga in tissue, teamed with a dupatta in green, pink and gold. Or a pink-and-gold lehnga embellished with emerald green motifs only on the skirt.
‘Who has designed these?’ I asked a shop owner, pointing to a burgundy-coloured satin skirt draped on a mannequin by the entrance.
‘We have no designer, baba, it is our tailor upstairs who makes these,’ he said, pointing to a winding stairway in the corner going up to what seemed like a loft. ‘People in India want lots of gota and colour. They like their clothes to be full of gold work all over . . . chakachak!’
After every few shops on Lalji Sand Ka Rasta, there were arched gateways unexpectedly leading to large marble courtyards. Perhaps calm and airy a hundred years ago, the courtyards were now congested with more shops on the remaining three sides, all selling wedding saris embellished with gota and coloured sequins in designs as frenzied as the ambience itself.
By the end of the day, my feet were sore with all the walking, my hair grey with dust and traffic fumes, and my eardrums ringing with the hullabaloo. I might have even dreamt of glitter on silk that night.
The following day, I chose to venture out to calmer quarters. I drove to the village of Sanganer, located about 15 kilometres to the north of Jaipur.
At first it resembled a rustic Indian idyll: a few mud houses and some brick-and-mortar ones painted white, broad, dusty roads with no motor vehicle except mine in sight, buffalo and goats bounding around, women in colourful saris fetching water from the pump, and men sitting by the roadside smoking bidis. As soon as my car halted, I could hear the birds chirp until some cows started mooing. The quietude belied Sanganer’s reputation as the centre for the much-celebrated Rajasthani block-printed cloth. A resident of Jaipur had earlier explained to me that in the sixteenth century, Prince Sanga, one of the sons of Raja Prithviraj, ruler of the kingdom of Dhoondhar, had founded Sanganer, and under his patronage and that of the successive rulers of Dhoondhar, paper-making and block printing on cloth became two of the major industries of this hamlet. Today, all that remains of that royal patronage are the families of artisans who once catered to royalty—they now take the traditional art forward, supplying their wares to the many export houses that visit Sanganer so it can be sold to the world.
Parking my car in a side lane of this quaint town, I walked towards a cloth dyeing ground spread across roughly two hectares of land, bordered by the river on one side and low stone walls on the other. Inside, there were five large sinks dug into the ground, of which three had yards of cloth dipped in chemically treated water so that they soak up the colour. The owner of the dyeing ground, Sandeep, walked up and explained it all to me.
‘Beyond the sinks . . . that vast expanse of land you see there?’ Sandeep pointed to a few hundred metres away.
‘Yes, yes,’ I replied, noticing the stretch of
