Art with a Heart!

Who in this world has the time to make something for you, with their own hands? In the age of assembly line like production for pretty much everything including our daily diet, handicraft stores come as a welcome change. Luckily, I live in Vadodara, Gujarat – a city well known for being a producer and marketer of Gujarat’s handicraft products. Here are some reflections from a recent handicraft exhibition visit.

Kutch embroidery work, popularly known as Kutch work is love at first sight for me. One can find me staring in awe at those intricately sewn thread work patterns replete with mirrors and beads. The colourful patterns hypnotize me of sorts, making it hard to take my eyes off them. When you hold a Kachchi cloth in your hand, you can feel how heavy the thread work has made the underlying fabric, brushing upon you a whiff and some loose threads left by the worker who originally made it. Kutch work is done on a host of items – blouses, skirts, hand bags, pillow covers, bed spreads and even shoes!

My next halt is at the stall that sells fabrics. Here, Salwar kameez fabrics are hand dyed cotton or jute yarns with special block prints. That’s an age old tradition of stamping designs or motifs on dyed cloth. Designs are often inspired by nature and include leaves, mangoes, peacocks as well as human figurines. I would hate leaving the store without picking up such a fabric which smells so old world, rustic and even dusty, almost Earthly.

Thanks to a very loud and jarring announcement of a puppet-musical, the shopping crowd drifts towards the puppet arena. Painted wood and cloth beings depict a human love story while dancing to folk tunes of love and longing. Today, these tunes sound familiar to the urban crowd thanks to Bollywood remixes of the original folk classics. I am myself quite enraptured by the whole setting and village like ambience.

The hut like food stalls blend in perfectly with the milieu. My favourite menu item is always the Pani-poori which one can imagine as wafer like hollow buns filled with potato-onion-chickpeas stuffing and to be eaten immediately after being dipped into spicy-sweet-tamarind water. So an amazing mix of flavours literally explodes in your mouth and while you are just registering what happened there, you are already asking for the next poori! I asked for ten of these before I decided it’s time for another round of handicraft shopping.

I take my time to sift through several other stalls which include pottery, clay work, wood work, 

traditional Warli paintings, and embroidery work. I pick up small nothings like embroidered key 

chains, bird hangings, Kutch-clutch purses and even small clay pots. Each of these items remind me 

that a little bit of time and a whit of art can indeed create a beautiful world around us! I always leave

inspired to contribute a little time to making something with my own hands for people I care about. 

Whatever the outcome, I call it ‘art with a heart’!