Traditional poetry in India likens life itself to cloth on a loom. However, the needs of children from artisan families are not addressed as the education being provided in not relevant to them and there are many dropouts or misfits who don’t wish to take the family tradition forward. India, with its breathtaking and varied textile traditions, is in the enviable position of having practically all the styles of weaving, printing and embroidery still intact. Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo. Now this weaver is a graduate who not only sent Wholesale cap embroidery machines machines me images on WhatsApp and after I selected the pieces, he couriered the stuff and within 10 days, my first batch of sarees was ready! The social media helped me to reach out to fellow saree wearers and many younger people who were happy to acquire the sarees.

Mohammed studied to become a college graduate but instead of looking for a job, expanded the family tradition of weaving to another level by taking a bank loan, putting looms in his sister’s and various cousins’ homes, mentored other members of the family to further develop their weaving skills and used the social media to hawk his wares. It is my dream to curate an exhibition that will attempt to give a pan-Indian overview of the amazing dexterity and mind-boggling range of textiles that form part of the sub-continent’s great cultural heritage. The fact that Indian textiles have captured the imagination of art historians and connoisseurs alike and generate tremendous interest is amply borne out by the fact that a large number of publications on the subject have and continue to emanate from all over the world. I decided to put the profit money in a small fund to help other weavers whenever I came across such situations.

 I called my weaver from Chanderi to send me some sarees that had space to print on them in the sense that weaving didn’t cover the entire saree.com. As a former consultant to the ministry of human resource development, I have tried several times to push for designing school syllabus in these crafts pockets with the children of crafts people in mind but to no avail. The reason for my syllabus agenda is very simple: India is divided into clear craft and weaving centres where for want of better alternatives, all children go to the same schools. Indian textiles find mention in some of the ancient bandishs and texts.The past few months I have been pre-occupied working with weavers from Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh and a few wooden block printers from Ayodhya and Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. While photographs and other published material has been seen, the actual textiles have been seen in fragments. The story of my block printer Naseeb is no different.