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7 Indian Women of Style & Substance
These legendary women represent the quintessentially Indian sense of style by pairing handcrafted sarees with elegant accessories in their unique way…read on! 1. MS Subbulakshmi Image Courtesy: The Hindu & karpuramanjari.blogspot.in A renowned Carnatic vocalist and the first Indian singer to receive the Bharat Ratna Award, the divine voice of MS Subbulakshmi is an inspiration…
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Katna’s Kantha: Crafting Lives in Murshidabad, Bengal
Slowly one stitches together the layers of frayed fabric Slowly, step by step, does one tread the path Slowly and steadily one scales the mountain – Sanskrit shloka; oral tradition Kantha embroidery is a distinct style applied to the creation of coverlets. Traditionally the Lep kantha of old, involved poor village women sewing together layers…
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A Sari Draping Workshop with Rta Kapur Chishti
We had a whale of a time hosting the Sari School Workshop with Rta Kapur Chisti in Delhi recently, to celebrate the six yard wonder…Participants learned a few of the more than 100 styles of draping, realising how fun the six yard drape can be! Here’s a peek of all the fun… (and just in…
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A Fine Evening This: Celebrating Urdu at Jashn-e-Rekhta
Lyrical poetry set to music, a gathering of fine linguists and leaves floating in the midst. This was the setting of the inauguration ceremony of the two day festival Jashn-e-Rekhta in Delhi yesterday, celebrating “Urdu’s inimitable beauty, its soul-stirring cadence and its lyrical splendor”. On 14th & 15th March, some of Urdu’s finest poets, authors and artists…
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When a Bride has #HerShareofFun!
Fun, spirited and brazen… that’s the bride of today. For she’s not going to suppress that craving… to run across a freshy-washed-in-the-rain field, or do an impromptu jig on the tables, uninhibited, or even pull her very own Mr. Groom’s leg…. all for some fun! Ever since you’ve sent us these… we haven’t stopped smiling.…
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The Geometric Genius of Toda Tribal Embroidery
This red and black play on cloth is an embroidery so fine that it looks like weaving. Toda embroidery created by the Toda tribe inhabiting the Niligiris, is reversible and they consider the rougher underside of the fabric as the ‘right’ side. The Todas are a small pastoral community who live on the isolated Nilgiri…
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To Alwar and Back in a Heartbeat
The yellow of her odhni, of the mustard in the breeze, of the unabashed sun. It is the color that follows you through the dusty roads that lead out of Delhi and towards Alwar, the ‘Gateway to Rajasthan’. Sitting to the north of the capital city Jaipur, this erstwhile princely state now beckons weekend free-wheelers…
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The Embroidery of Life: Needle Crafts and Colors of Kutch
Amidst the barren desert landscape of the western border towns of India, smatterings of color are a representation of life, appearing as adornments on the bodies of the beautiful tribes. Embroidery, here, is not a glorious vocation but part of the daily fabric of how a day is spent. It isn’t uncommon to walk among…
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The Vankars of Bhujodi
The festive vibrance of embroidered textiles is the natural show stealer within Kutch textiles, but the subtler, elegant outcome from the rhythmic clacking of Bhujodi’s Vankar family of weavers is not far behind in appeal. The Vankars or weavers of Kutch weave colorful threads on the loom, with the yarn coming from Bhujodi, Ludhiana, Rajasthan…
Storytellers of Wonder 