How pretty, how apparent, how applicable that Srinagar be named a World Craft Metropolis.

Each lane, each dwelling, each road nook is stuffed with the sights, sounds and presence of weavers and spinners, scarf makers and embroiderers, papier-mâché painters, walnut wooden carvers, brass and copper employees, jewellers, namda rug felters, wicker employees, dyers, and printers. The sample maker’s sing-song chant of the talim echo because the carpet karigars deftly tie knots in time with its beat.

Kashmiri craft is a crucial technique of employment and incomes; it is usually a type of self-expression and identification. In a inhabitants of simply over 10 million, almost 3.50 lakh individuals are straight engaged in craft. In latest a long time, even girls have turned to embroidery, lengthy a male protect, as their husbands and fathers had been absent — useless, in jail, or in an Indian metro eking out a dwelling.

An artisan laying out strips of felt to start out a namda rug
| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

Block printing amid gunfire

As I learn the comfortable information, my thoughts flashes again to 2005. I’m in Jan Mohammad’s tiny loft within the previous metropolis, getting cloth block-printed for embroidery. The scene is untouched by the years: cabinets stretched to the ceiling with intricately carved mulberry wooden blocks, some over a 100 years previous. Their motifs of chinar leaves, paisleys, kingfishers and iris are impressed by the wildlife of the Valley.

Jan Mohammad block printing
| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

Jan Mohammad kneels at a low desk, his pheran and lengthy fingers equally impregnated with color. A samovar of salt tea by his aspect, a hookah effervescent close by. The sound of the block, coated with rice flour and resin, a rhythmic counterpoint to the wheezing music of his historic transistor. His austere face is intense, with the focus of an artist.

A muezzin chants, and different calls to prayer resonate within the quiet air. A few girls sit embroidering. The common puk-puk of their ari needles puncturing the taut material on their embroidery frames has a soothing high quality — a sound acquainted within the Valley over the centuries.

Girls embroidering
| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

However sadly, the tranquillity is an phantasm. A sudden crack of gunfire bizarrely echoes Jan Mohammad’s fist banging on his block. Smoke fills the air. A stone smashes the window. Peering out, we see a mob hurling rocks, a gun battle with armoured jeeps and police, retailers being set afire. They’re protesting the dying of two younger boys killed in a raid.

We’re prisoners for the day. A curfew is introduced — there will likely be no extra work this week. Naid Kadal, the place we’re, is a hub of insurgency. Individuals dwell in concern: of getting drawn into confrontation, of armed reprisals, of just about day by day bandhs. The economic system of the Valley, lengthy depending on centuries-old rhythms of tourism and craft, is in decline.

A slab of wooden turns into intricate artwork
| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

Craft is part of home life

The Central Authorities’s 2019 abrogation of Article 370 and subsequent harsh army lockdown modified issues. It drove dissent underground, and restored an uneasy calm. It additionally noticed Indian vacationers slowly returning to the Valley. Nonetheless, craft in Kashmir, like a lot else, stays threatened. Not by the lack of ability, or lack of craftspeople, however by the absence of enlightened patronage to maintain creativity alive.

Trippers on cut-price bundle excursions, the principle guests at this time, need low cost souvenirs, not costly masterpieces. Kashmiris themselves are promoting lurid machine-made Ludhiana imitations of jamawar shawls. Papier-mâché, which crafted imperial thrones, is piled in every single place, as Christmas tree baubles, tawdry pillboxes and serviette rings. Jan Mohammad, with whom I started this piece, is now a watchman within the PWD.

Fortunately, craft nonetheless stays part of home life — as inside décor, clothes and artefacts. Households sit, work and sleep on Kashmiri carpets, girls put on embroidered shawls and pherans. Khwaja Naqshband’s tomb close to the Jama Masjid is the supreme instance of khatamband (wooden working), however ceilings of properties and houseboats stay ornamented with related panels of intricately carved pinewood. Lanes within the previous metropolis abound with retailers lined with naqashi copperware made for native consumption — samovars, platters and trays, engraved and embossed with stylised paisleys or calligraphy.

The beginning of a copper surahi
| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

Want for discerning consumers

Hopefully, this new recognition of Srinagar will lead to renewed consciousness of its distinctive high quality, bringing again worldwide vacationers and consumers. Supplies, abilities and makers stay in abundance.

What makes Kashmiris such consummate craftspeople? Craftsmanship will not be merely commerce, however a inventive response to the setting and life. Kashmiri craft is an echo of its panorama; it additionally expresses the Sufi philosophy at its coronary heart. Kashmiriyat, although struggling the injuries of violence and insurgency, is basically a civilisation in itself.

An artisan weaving a wicker basket
| Picture Credit score:
Laila Tyabji

Because the media celebrated the announcement of Srinagar as a World Craft Metropolis, aspect by aspect, in one among our nationwide dailies, was a report on suicides of handloom weavers in Telangana. It was an unconscious snapshot of our craft sector. One story highlighted the potential of craft in a world that’s in any other case more and more mass-produced; the opposite, paradoxically, the tragedy that craftspeople, our nice Indian asset, aren’t valued and supported.

Let’s ship some love, not simply to Srinagar and Kashmiriyat, however to craftspeople in every single place. Whereas we cherish their handiwork, we frequently ignore the folks making it.

The author is founder member of Dastkar, and has labored with crafts in Kashmir because the Eighties.