High up in the mountains, where there was not a sound to be heard or a soul to be seen, Sunita Bali found her purpose. She was sure her quest to find meaning to life was finally over. Amid a handful of weavers, she found happiness. She had gone there to assist them with best practices that was required for them to sustain their businesses. But she stayed on to create miracles for herself too. The art works she got made by these weavers using textiles, with her paintings and photographs as reference, have been put up at Delhi Gymkhana Club as part of an exhibit called Himalayan Weaves. They are testimony to her love affair with the mountains and what lies far beyond.
As part of a project by Ministry of Textiles, she took up her first project in Himachal Pradesh’s Tirthan and Janjehli valleys. She was to help weavers re-establish confidence in their skill and to find equitable ways of restructuring their approach to make it viable for city dwellers and the increasing export market.
“There is something very humbling about working with the grassroots. How these people have to trek many kilometres everyday to buy yarn, was really eye opening. How we take our indigenous textile heritage for granted is really sad and if one saw what goes into making one garment, you it would change your outlook,” says Bali.
She helped them stand on their feet by imparting a nuanced design-based knowledge into garment weaving. No more was it about producing elementary patterns, but to craft stylistic accessories that would find a larger audience. The government would provide villages subsidised looms and Bali would use her expertise in design interventions. She does so even today.
Ever since she set foot on the Himalayan turf, she knew one thing, that she would stay on today, tomorrow and forever, away from family, home and the land she knew best, to make a remarkable life of simplicity, productivity and social solidarity. It’s a rude shock when she comes back home to Delhi. “Actually, the mountains are my home. I shudder when I have to come back to the city. The pollution, the crows, the traffic… it’s all appalling,” she says, grateful that she is away from a good part of the year.
The mountains had been familiar to her as her father was from the army’s Dogra regiment. She had travelled widely as a child and taken in the essence of the peaks and valleys, finally calling them home.
When she gave her sketches and photos of these surroundings to the weavers the first time, as blueprints for her textile art, they were surprised. “I guided them and showed them how its to be done but they were in disbelief even after they had followed my advice and worked on the design. They couldn’t believe that they had created it themselves. It gave them a sense of pride,” he says.
For the art that has become so close to Bali’s textile practise, she credits a Finnish artist named Soile Yli-Mäyry. When Mäyry was having an exhibition in Delhi, she asked Bali whether she would be interested in converting her paintings into art. “I was completely taken aback. This was the first time something of this nature was being suggested and I wasn’t sure how it would materialise. I went up to my weaves and started working on the idea immediately,” she says.
The first sample took her 9 months. But finally she made many stoles with Mäyry’s artistic impressions. This had laid the foundation stone for her own creations using her drawings and visuals. Russian painter Nicholas Roerich, the master of mountains, has also served as inspiration. He had settled in Nagar, a small town between Kullu and Manali and would paint the mountains in his glory.
Bali studied graphic design at the JJ School of Art and upon finishing her education, she joined her mother’s textile business. For 12 years they worked together, until her father had a stroke. Then, they shut the business down because their frame of mind didn’t allow to carry it further. Things today have changed multifold. Had her father been alive to see how she has advanced, he would have been proud to see how Bali is serving the mountains just like he protected them in his way. On till October 31, at Cocktail Bar, Delhi Gymkhana Club, Safdarjung Road.