Having spent most of my adult life traveling the villages of India in the quest for unknown textile traditions and crafts, I was often struck by the headful of pre --conceived notions we city dwellers bring with us. Even our so-called desire to "help society" comes with its own burden of "isms"! In stark contrast, are the people I work with. Master weavers and artisans, their immense wealth of knowledge and technical expertise sits lightly on their shoulders. They take each day as it comes and embrace each human they come across on his or her own merits. I started LoomKatha, as an endeavour to do the same. To tell the stories of the artisans I meet, not through the lense of the sociologist or philantrophist but simply as a short story of one human being relayed by another. Each artisan we feature has a story and we will try in our own small way to tell it. Our eventual aim? To link each of our products back to the person who has made them, so that you know not only where and how it was made but really the personality of the person who made it. That will take a while though--and reams of html and ERP support (uff!) but we will get there. Till then, this blog is a starting point. Here's the picture that has remained an inspiration for all that I do--3 supremely talented weavers Riyaz, Aftab and Shamsher Ansari of Banaras in the midst of a heated argument on the exact yarn needed to make the fabric they have in hand.
