What is India? What is Folkcrafts? and why do we really need to preserve it?
Few years ago, when i had decided to work directly with the crafts community leaving tempting offers behind, lesser did i know that it will lur me with it's empathy and dynamics like uraes ( an egyptian serpant god).
My love hate relationship with this semi-organised sector has only made me stronger, i have made more than 30 visits to approximately 20 different craft clusters in the rural/remote India, majorly spending 1 to 2 months at one place. This aggressive travelling of past 3-4 years has made me more sensitive and empathatic.
When i eat, celebrate, breathe and live their life, i also exchange their sadness and trauma, like a part of me becomes who they are (hopefully vice-versa).
Today, it feels like i am already living in my 30's because of these intense indescribable experiences my work has bought me. Its like my Spiritual, emotional and personal growth has boosted by X2 or maybe X3...where i believe handmade is the sector of Love, empathy and being rooted to oneself. India's second largest employement generation sector vastly employing BPL (Below Poverty Line) category . I had a notion of pitty and charity just because i felt they did'nt have the comfort like urbans or they'll miss the Space X launch. It is funny how we urbans think that technology is the only way of evolution or call ourselves "Modern".
I learned being modern in the remote villages of Odisha, where tribal women bathe naked in the water pools of their hamlets and men sit around trees playing cards without eye scavanging females. It is their day- to- day life to paint sensual female figures with an eye of appreciating feminine energy and nature. Smoking pot together and chilling under a broad leaf tree looking after their herd.
Now that's being modern, Isn't it !!
Can an Indian woman drape the old ways of saree in any metropolitan city without being eye raped in public ? No, but that was also an India which is now living it's last breath under the shade of rural today.
I learned spirituality with the mythical landscapes of Hampi & Himalyas, Channelising intense emotions in Kashmir and being mindful with the people of Kerala. It isnt any industry, intitute or instagram motivation page which taught me but the very personal human experiences we live in this physical form for.
And this is why these roots carry way more than a product. It has its own nervous sytem keeping our soil nourished in ways we are not even aware of, one of which is culture and the practice of this ancient knowledge called folkcrafts.
Photograph Credits: Nahida Parveen
Comments