Varanasi has had many names beginning with Baranasi in old Pali scripts, and many others like Avimytaka, Suranshana, Ramya and Kashi, before officially becoming Varanasi only in 1956. The city of Varanasi has an unquantifiable aura of being agelessly old, undefinably spiritual, and offering a sense of peace and continuity when you leave the chaos […]
Issue #007, Winter, 2021 ISSN: 2581- 9410 Brand identity, design marks and the feting of designers is now an almost daily feature of our morning […]
Nestling in rural Bengal, amidst the verdant paddy fields punctuated by picturesque pukurs (ponds) and grandiose antiquity, are entire weaver villages engaged in creating the equivalent of poetry on fabric. Triumphing over the trauma of partition, weaver families, which migrated to West Bengal in the 1950’s, have helped keep alive a priceless heritage of highly […]
An un-stitched length of woven cotton and/or silk, draped around the body, traditionally as the dominant garment of Indian women. (plural: saris, sarees) The unstitched draped sari is worn, with few exceptions, across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent. Amazingly, each geographical and cultural area has, not only specific traditions of weaving the […]
A radical feminist expressed pain that I painted my toe nails while having pretensions to being a real person. One of India’s brightest young designers sat at my feet, amazed that I could wear a saree, grey hair and a jooda with “attitude”. People stereotype you by what you wear. No wonder that the unconfident […]