Malvika Singh is a writer, curator, cultural historian and the publisher of many books as well as the journal of ideas Seminar. Books she has authored include New Delhi: Making of a Capital, Delhi: India in One City, Snowdon’s India and Bhutan: Through the lens of the King. Books she has edited include Delhi: The First City, Chennai: A City of Change, Hyderabad: A City of Hope, Kolkata: A Soul City, Lucknow: A City Between Cultures, Mumbai: A City of Dreams and Freeing the Spirit: Iconic Women of India. She has also worked extensively in theatre and cinema.
Her latest book Saris of Memory: A Memoir is a story of her varied and eclectic life and career spanning over five decades, as well as of India’s handloom revival since independence, told through her inimitable collection of rare handwoven saris – built up over a lifetime.
In a conversation with Scroll, she talked about the timelessness of Indian textiles, her efforts to revive handloom, and why it is crucial to preserve local forms of art and culture. Excerpts from the conversation:
Why use saris to tell a story of your life and times?
I got my first sari when I was eight or nine years old and from the age of 16, I only wore saris. I was passionate about fabrics, about the un-stitched length of woven cloth. It didn’t have to be a brocade or anything elaborate. Cotton was my favourite in all textures and counts. My grandmother wore chikan saris, mostly in white or light pastels. My mother [Raj Thapar] wore handlooms because she grew up during the struggle for Independence and was influenced by the call of the time. I grew up seeing this and living it. Over the years the only thing I regularly buy is saris. I love all skills of the hand, having been brought up in an environment where traditional legacies were celebrated.
Jewellery interests me primarily for the fine workmanship that also creates wonderful objects to adorn the body and embellish the drape of the sari. But when push comes to shove it is textiles that move me. By textiles I mean carpets and dhurries, wall hangings and shawls, painted fabrics and quilts, everything that has been crafted using cloth. Riten Mozumdar, the great modernist, hand-painted lengths of khadi to make curtains for my bedroom. Years later, when the curtains frayed, I used the cloth to make myself a pair of bell-bottom trousers. I did not know, at the time, that a Riten textile would become a treasure in an archive or museum. We were a privileged generation influenced by men and women who were breaking new ground, following their dreams.
Wherever I travel in the world, from Dharuhera to Moscow, I buy a textile or hand-crafted object as a marker of that memory. These are not necessarily valuable in terms of price and resale value, but are treasures that tell many anecdotal stories of my life – all of which fit into a larger jigsaw. Over the years I have greedily collected saris. I want to keep them all. There are some that are not woven any more. I have one cotton sari from Koraput [in Odisha] which is not woven any longer in the same weight and count of cotton – like the one which I bought at the time of the Festivals of India. I feel privileged to have my thick and heavy unbleached cotton saris. I have a collection of 1500 saris, all of which I have worn and which are precious. My personal treasures.
When I moved to America for a year to be with my husband [Tejbir Singh], who was studying there, I worked as a salesgirl in a Government of India shop on Harvard Square called SONA. It sold Indian textiles and crafts. When I returned home a year later I was offered a job at the Handicrafts and Handlooms Exports Corporation, HHEC, which I happily accepted. Mapu [Martand Singh] joined HHEC in the same year. Pupul Jayakar was our boss. She became my mentor. I learned about India and its creative industries under Pupul’s tutelage. A few years later I left HHEC and started designing silver jewellery, making documentary films and exploring this country, travelling across India as much as possible.
Then, in the 80s, the Festivals of India were initiated. These were state-sponsored international exhibitions curated to showcase the ancient arts and sciences of India, as well as the traditional legacies of the country, overseas. The best of India was to be celebrated on the world stage. Pupul Jayakar headed the exercise.
We were back in play working on projects that Pupul and her colleagues had envisaged. Pupul would throw us into the deep end, as it were, and she protected us from going under. We took on the challenges that came our way and brought in experts and professionals as well as technical assistance to help ideas materialise. “Impresarios” partnered with skilled experts and worked as a team. For example, Martand Singh was the “dreamer, the impresario” and Rakesh Thakore crafted those ideas and dreams into tangible realities. Mapu orchestrated the patterning of all the technical work that Rakesh did, much like the conductor in an orchestra. The revival of different saris and weaving techniques, masterfully imagined by Mapu and Rakesh along with their team, culminated in the Vishvakarma exhibition for the Festivals of India. Thereafter, many other similar projects and “revivals” happened, setting down and establishing a process of change and rejuvenation within the handloom sector.
I wanted to document this time when young people could collaborate with government institutions and work on exciting, large-scale projects. Back then, we didn’t charge large fees to do any of this. We still don’t. Through Saris of Memory, I wanted to talk about a period where we all worked relentlessly for what we cared about. It was just the most exhilarating way to live and work.
Indira Gandhi, in her cotton handloom and khadi saris, made a huge impact on my generation. She was our style icon. We too wore similar saris, proud to emulate a charismatic leader. Then came manmade fibre saris under the brand Vimal, introduced into the market by Dhirubai Ambani. These economical, resilient and long-lasting, wash-and-wear saris, that needed no ironing, became very popular. They were convenient. They were light to wear. Working women embraced them. The wheel turned again in the late 80s post the Festivals of India, and handloom saris started to come into their own again. Today the handloom sector has been resurrected yet again, this time by a generation of young people wanting to return to their cultural roots, energise their identity, and revisit the foundation of their space to imagine a different future. I wanted to share anecdotal bits and pieces of another time and space with those who live in the “now”, looking forward. The past is a necessary element in the story of the moment.
With so many innovations and interventions, as you say, what determines a sari’s identity today?
Interventions, experiments and “innovation” – I personally dislike the word – are essential. But, I believe there are some rules that should be adhered to. Never cut up a sari to make it into a stitched garment. Never make a sari that a woman can zip herself into. It defies the definition. It kills the sensibility. Because what defines the sari is that it is an unstitched length of cloth. It can be draped any which way the person chooses to. New styles can emerge in changed times. A sari, six metres of cloth, can be worn and draped in different ways, across and over jeans and a tee shirt, instead of being tucked into a petticoat.
The wearing of such unstitched clothes – saris, dhotis, turbans, angavastrams, dupattas, odhnis – is, in fact, keeping the tradition of weaving alive in this country. The way a sari is worn and draped, the manner in which a dhoti or turban is wrapped, are living dictionaries of communities, languages, customs, symbols and signals, that communicate histories.
You’ve written about saris telling the story of India’s diversity but also documenting rooted traditions. Could you illustrate?
Take the ajrakh sari. You can trace ajrakh textiles back to Mohenjodaro. What is the motif in ajrakh textiles?
Plucked from the sky above, from the universe, stars, the waxing and waning moon, the constellations. What are the colours? Indigo blue in all its shades, much like a changing sky, and madder. The earth and sky. Ajrakh represents that. With the human in between the two. For me, those are the colours of India. They tell me the story of this land. The motifs tell me the story of traditions and heritage and the sound of the shuttle tells me the story of the music of our land.
The recitation of the pattern by the Kanihama weaver in Kashmir when weaving the Kani shawl is memorable, etched in my mind for always. The master weaver sings the pattern while he deftly moves one colour into another to create a woven gem. His mind and memory, passed down generations, are his computer and software. Incredible and wondrous. India’s patented IT rests in the brain and culminates, through the hands onto the loom. For me, the inherent resilience of India as a cultural entity is entrenched in the looms and multiple weaving skills.
Let’s look at how the sari is draped. In Maharashtra a sari has nine yards, not five, because they take it through, between their legs so that the sari comes up to their knees like draped pedal pushers, to enable women to wade comfortably through paddy fields – Maharashtra is a traditional paddy growing area. Draping and the ways of tying the sari vary. Because it is an unstitched length of cloth it can be adapted to any and every need. It is versatile. Coorg has a different way of tying the sari. In Tamil Nadu there’s no such thing as a petticoat to tuck the sari into – they pull up a portion at the end of the sari and tie a knot. They then wind the sari around themselves.
Let’s look at colour. Why are Kerala saris white with just a thin border in gold? Because it’s a riverine community and communities living in the region did not want to pollute their rivers with effluents and dye from dye-house. They understood and respected the natural environment that sustained them. They wore cream (kora) or off-white with a little bit of gold.
Let’s look at cotton-growing areas like Nimar, in the plains of Madhya Pradesh. Ahilyabai introduced looms there to weave cotton angavastrams for the pundits. Hers was a temple town and she, a devotee and patron. Later her descendant, Shivaji Rao Holkar (Richard) started the Rehwa Society and he with his wife Sally, and a group of friends, began weaving Maheshwari saris that developed from the original Indori sari.
India was a great cotton-weaving centre. Silk was easier to weave and so when silk was introduced, fine cotton saris that were historically woven in some centres began to fade away as silk took precedence.
This goes for Banarasi saris as well. Fine jamdani cotton came off the looms. Then silk began to dominate. So as an experiment, during the Covid lockdown, my daughter-in-law, Anjali Singh, handed me a wonderful project to do from my sanctum sanctorum, my study at home. To imagine and create 21 textiles from across the different weaving traditions in the country. I rang up weavers I knew across India. I asked one weaver in Varanasi to weave a fine cotton traditional Shikargah sari. He asked me what colour I wanted. I asked him to look at the sun setting on the Ganga and recreate the hue that invades the sky at sunset. For another, I asked him to recreate the pale yellow of Amul Butter. And he did. He created two masterpieces.
Our colour palette was dictated by nature. The colours are described with referential words like neem, a particular sap green; pyaazi, the pink of the Indian onion skin also called rose pink or old rose; baingani, the purple of brinjal; asmaani, a bewitching light blue of a clear sky; narangi, a lovely orange shade of the tangerine; and amavasya, the dark slate of a moonless night.
Another painter I knew from the Festival of India days, who had painted birds in flight on a very large square fabric, painted a sari that was the forest in Ranthambore. He had never been to the forest but his imagination is a story of the jungle in fine cotton – seven metres of it.
What are milestones on your own journey with revival?
The Festivals of India was definitely one. Travelling around parts of India at that time made me realise what a lease of life it gave artisans whose skills had been compelled to lie dormant because there was no market demand for their products, because plastic and nylon were in play. Therefore, preparation for the festivals rejuvenated the cultural essence of this country, whether in the space of crafts, pottery, painting or textiles. It was also a turning point for me because I realised we in urban India were doing nothing to make our creative industries or sector productive and self-sufficient. The Festivals of India were a learning ground for me at many levels.
Another milestone was setting up the Rehwa Society in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh. I didn’t know Richard Holkar but he came to me and said he wanted to start a weaving centre and empower the local community. Muzaffar and Subhashini Ali, Richard and Sally Holkar and my husband and I were founder members of Rehwa.
At the time there was one man who knew how to structure the pit loom. The first tranche of money came from Leela Mulgaokar and we built eight looms. Thereafter we began an “Adopt A Loom” campaign. I came to Delhi and got Pupul [Jayakar], Shabana Azmi, Dharma Kumar, Raj Thapar and some others to put down their money for a loom. Today Rehwa has nearly fifty looms.
We introduced a scheme for the women weavers by offering them land and interest free loans to build their homes. This empowered them economically and socially. Infants and toddlers would come to the Rehwa Society with their mothers. In playing around they would touch the warp, staining the warp, so we started a creche. And it grew organically.
A third milestone, at another level, was setting up INTACH [Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage]. We were invited to become founding members. This was an honour. INTACH started with nothing. A house was allocated in Lodhi Estate. I remember we donated the fax machine from the Business India office. I donated my air conditioner. I recall asking Pupul Jayakar why the Prime Minister was inviting younger people to be founder members rather than the older, more accomplished people. “She is determined to hand it to the next generation now,” was Jayakar’s reply.
Looking back at India’s cultural revival journey, from independence till now, what would you have done differently?
If I were to rejig how one tackled the artisan sector, which was in fact the most organised in this country, I would have invested money, infrastructure, and whatever else, at the point of production, in situ, in rural India and created a marketing and distribution network running parallel to the administrative framework, from the village panchayat and the artisan to the local, district and state markets, all the way up to national markets. The ideal thing would have been to put the infrastructure in place where the artisans were rather than relocate them to alien spaces. The setting up of kala academies was done with the best intention but it disconnected the maker from his familiar landscape and uprooted him. This applies across disciplines, from handlooms to theatre and music.
Take folk theatre. We have traditions of singing and storytelling, of varying kinds, in every village in India. Why have those theatre forms disappeared? They are being researched and revived now, but for audiences in urban India, trapped in proscenium stages. When you speak to the Manganiyars, for example, they tell you candidly that they are requested to sing popular numbers like “Chaap Tilak” or “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar”, which audiences identify with, instead of songs intrinsic to their own folk tradition.
We should have used technology to create a highway for marketing such products, from rural India to small towns, to slightly bigger towns and so on, in the same way as India structured the administration network. Today the internet has created “highways” where the weaver, using Instagram, has cut out the middleman and is able to sell products directly at competitive prices.
Today, if one were to look at reviving what was the backbone of this civilisation, I would suggest that every parliamentary constituency be supported and encouraged to conserve one element saluting the natural environment, be it a pond, a river, a plant or animal species; one man-made material heritage such as a haveli, a shrine, or any such structure; one local craft or skill; and one performance-based tradition, be it musical, theatrical or even an oral tradition of recitation. It is elements that define the “culture” of an area. This would create as many visitor destinations as there are parliamentary constituencies. Homestays would mushroom. Incomes would rise as would employment. It is a tried and tested formula elsewhere in the world. Talavera, in Spain, is where people flock to buy the local pottery. Why can’t we do this here? Why can’t Khurja, in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, become a great and beautiful place for the world to visit and buy handmade earthenware?
In this book, you’ve touched upon the fact that your parents’ home was a meeting place for artists, actors, writers, poets, filmmakers, philosophers, business people, activists, bureaucrats as well as “the rudderless in search of a mentor”, of all ages and nationalities. This is true for your home too, today, and, also, you continue to run Seminar, a magazine of ideas which your parents founded. Can you elaborate on this? Also, is there a connection between the two things?
Our home has been an open house for as long as I can remember. It was a home where people were coming and going all the time. We were constantly engaging with people and their passions – from fashion to politics, poetry, literature and more, all at the same time.
This was just after independence. My parents were in their twenties then. They had aspiring actors like Dilip Kumar, Kamini Kaushal and others from the film world. There were Sardar Jafri, Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain, Bobby Kooka and many others who came home, all dreaming the dream of the future. They were all “political animals” having been through the struggle for independence. They discussed, argued and debated every issue under the sun. India was attractive. India was a new nation-state. The go-to destination. Filmmakers, writers, poets, came from across the world to Bombay which was, at the time, the cultural hub. So the house had visitors like Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Roberto Rosellini. There was an intellectual energy that was intoxicating during those prohibition years! Bombay was amazing in the 50s.
I remember it was fashionable to be Left of Centre, and even businessman JRD Tata once said to my father that he wanted to be the first socialist businessman.
In 1959, my parents launched Seminar as a platform for a new India to exchange ideas. It was built around one subject every month – where you got different points of view. “Agree to disagree” was at its root. Its purpose was engagement; bringing people to the table. I grew up with a broad outlook on things, to be curious about everything around me, to engage, to read and question, to explore, look and see. This resulted in me becoming a “professional dilettante”, but it’s been a life well lived.
My family moved to Delhi then to spend more time with my grandfather who had retired from the Indian Army and settled down in Chanakyapuri, which was a new enclave coming up at the edge of central Delhi. My parents lived life here, just as they had in Bombay. It was an open house that resounded with conversation and laughter, debate and argument.
I carried on that tradition because I knew nothing else. When my parents passed away, Tejbir, my husband, and I continued to publish Seminar.
What, according to you, are the high points in Delhi’s cultural and intellectual history?
I came to Delhi in 1961 from the metropolitan and cosmopolitan city of Bombay.
We landed at Safdarjung Airport in those days. Delhi was a stark contrast to Bombay. Everyone was home by 9 pm. There was not a car on the road, and after listening to the news on All India Radio we would get into bed with a book. We read a lot. There was a black and white TV but not in our cottage at the rear of the main house where my grandparents lived. For those who had it, Krishi Darshan was the high point. Through the long months of summer, the electricity would go off for three to four hours at night, at 42 degrees Celsius, and we would throw water on the terrace floor, wrap ourselves in wet sheets, and fall asleep to wake up at dawn. Jackals, from the next door Ridge, would howl late at night, at our front gate.
When Indira Gandhi came to power in the late 1960s, things began to change. She was 48 years old and our first woman Prime Minister. There was excitement in the air as she started to support the ideas of a new generation: her generation and the one following. One example was how she brought Buckminster Fuller to India to look at airports as geodesic domes. Pupul Jayakar, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, and Kapila Vatsayan were all activated to initiate projects. Rather rapidly, the Bombay of the 1950s morphed into Delhi of the 1960s.
Come 2000. A new millennium. A new generation. Energetic change was palpable. Entrepreneurship was beginning to take a front seat. Confidence was back in play. And, over the last two decades, Jaipur has become a cultural hub, Bangalore is making a statement, Kolkata is rejuvenating and Mumbai is once again taking ownership of its diverse cultural realities. Indore, Bhopal, Goa, Kochi and more, are becoming important destinations for the arts. There is a huge change and consolidation that is happening.
This revival, reinvention, restoration, call it what you may, is for real. Another generation seems to be exploring their past to design their future. I get much vicarious pleasure from this forward march.
