Back in Delhi, when I mentioned this to Laila Tyabji, chairperson of Dastkar (a society for crafts and craftspeople) she repeated what she has mentioned over the years. That the initial visits she made to Kutch for Garvi Gurjari, the Government of Gujarat Emporium, almost 50 years back, changed her life. “Mohammed Khatri was quietly changing Ajrakh from what was being very crudely printed as bedsheets and the Rabari man’s shoulder clothes to the refinement that it is now. His sons Ismail and Razzak then took it further. In the Sixties and the Seventies, real, double-sided Ajrakh using Indigo and natural dyes was only being done in Pakistan. It used to be smuggled to Kutch because the Kutchi pastoral tribes liked authentic stuff,” says Tyabji.

How the Story Turns

Juned is dressed in blue denims folded at the bottom and a white kurta. His dark, thick beard veils his grins. Before he began to unselfconsciously pull out pieces of Ajrakh fabric from the store to tie them on his head or waist, then drape on the shoulders to demonstrate the versatility of the drape, his phone rang non-stop. From Kutchi to Gujarati to a sing-song and indulgent English, from his “gooo-d morning” “hai-lohs” and “b-byes”, our Juned is a man of the world. A far cry from his adolescent self, when, as a son of the indigo-laced soil of Kutch, he went to learn enterprise and creative strategy under Judy Frater, guru and mentor of more than one generation of craftsmen in the region. Frater, who currently runs Somaiya Kala Vidyalaya in Adipur, earlier taught at Kutch’s Kala Raksha Institute. She has singularly impacted many artisans. From Bhuj to Dhamadka. From Mandvi to Khavda, Frater’s name keeps coming up in awe- inspiring references, whether you dig stories of Ajrakh, of embroidery, weaving or Bandhini.

“I was a mazdoor (labourer) then, now I am an artisan,” says Juned crisply covering the distance between his school dropout years to education under Frater. He emphasises how he learnt to articulate with designers and brand representatives from cities. Today, he is a confident artisan and promoter of Ajrakh. He travels abroad many times a year giving lecture demonstrations from Japan to Canada or setting up exhibitions. He argues persuasively about pricing and quality. Quite like his elder brother, the 36-year-old Sufiyan, who has recently recruited a Japanese designer to work with their studio for an evolution of the design language.

While Juned is among the collaborative artisans who have worked with Good Earth’s Asha Madan on the Ajrakh fabric to be used for the upcoming Sindhu show and new collection, the same is the case with his cousin Adam Khatri in Dhamadka. Razzak Khatri’s son.

We met them individually in different months but each stressed the importance of block printing on new materials like crepe, chignon, marble cotton, handloom, khadi, Chanderi and of course Gajji silk and Mashru from Kutch. “Meenakari designs take two fine stamps of the hand for the motif to show,” said Juned, while 40 kms or so away in Dhamadka, Adam spoke of the importance of natural dyes, showing us boxes that hold indigo, sand, iron, pomegranate skin, turmeric before they are dissolved to make dye gels or solutions.

Each family in Ajrakhpur and Dhamadka is involved in some form or the other with the Ajrakh industry. Many others work with tie and dye—or Bandhini. Not everyone involved or employed here is an artisan or craftsperson. Some are just daily wage workers. Yet, the surge in the demand both for Ajrakh as well as the crafts and textiles of Kutch is undeniable. No wonder locals wear only screen printed and napthol dyed Ajrakh. The “original” has taken wings to the cities of the world.

From curated collaborations for specific collections to large-scale wholesale supplies to brands like Fabindia, Shoppers Stop or Reliance Retail, they do it all. That’s why it is also for the crafts curious reader of these stories to know that not every person related to the Ajrakh industry in Kutch is an artisan. Many are crafts labourers or hired hands, who work in the seven day a week workshops as employees (read our article The Talented Unseen next week).

So while Juned’s question, “Why do people love this centuries-old textile so much?” needs to be answered, the last word goes to Judy Frater.

“The Khatris who make Ajrakh know that in the true sense of slow fashion, the longer you take to make one, the better it is. The very essence of Ajrakh is slow and excellent, not perfect as perfection is an industrial idea. Today, ironically, Ajrakh is so much in demand that it is endangered. The tremendous push to scale up forces artisans to cut corners and devalue their work. Industrial-scale Ajrakh stresses the environment with its frightening consumption of water and the society with its transformation of a horizontal social structure to a vertical one. Dr Ismail however has gotten off the bullet train of scaled-up Ajrakh production. He is again carving his own blocks and printing his own fabric. What do we need to do to get this quality? I ask him. He beams and says, “You have to make it with love.”