It is a sari bible. And in it has come together, several decades of Indian culture, power, and personal and institutional memory. The different sections of Malvika Singh’s recently published Saris of Memory (NFW Productions) are separated, not into chapters, but by memories that keep circling back to what can be called her three 'churches'.
The first is Pupul Jayakar, her mentor, who set the course for the preservation of handmade traditional skills, and the restoration and revival of India’s multiple handloom techniques after Independence. Second, Indira Gandhi, who had an undeniable presence as the first woman prime minister of India, and who wore only handwoven saris, putting them on the fashion map of the world by making them a power-dress for political rallies, formal meetings with heads of state, and while presiding over a cabinet in which men were predominant. “She showed us we could take on the world in a sari. She set the trend for women of my generation,” says Singh.
And third, of course, is the indelible impact of her parents, Raj and Romesh Thapar, journalists and activists, co-founders of the influential Seminar magazine, one of India’s first print platforms, which, through its pages, carried on conversations on culture, politics and ideas. Navigating through their bohemian milieu and beyond, Singh had access to important networks, the best minds and practitioners of the arts of her time. (Do not miss catching a very young Romila Thapar, her aunt and eminent historian of ancient India, in a striped sari among the family photographs in the book.)
Singh herself became a key figure in many institutions that were to direct and define India’s post-Independence culture. And she wore a sari every day to work; in the book there is a picture of her atop her desk at the India Magazine office, wearing one as she contemplates “her next move”.
“Today, there are many younger women who talk of wearing a sari much like trying on a costume for a play. In our time, we didn’t think about it. We draped it, tucked it in, and walked out into the world. Its pallu can be used to cover your head in the heat, you can cry into it, wipe off a bit of dust on table with it, and more. Saris were worn for all occasions – to a wedding, on a hunt, to climb a mountain..... For me, buying a sari as often as I could, was much like collecting stamps for a collection,” says Singh, sitting in her study at her Chanakyapuri home wearing a salwar kameez. “I have a frozen shoulder today, so no sari,” she says with a chuckle.
Personal interventions
In the ’60s, along with crafts and textiles expert Martand Singh, Malvika Singh was a founder member of INTACH. She was the convenor of its Delhi chapter and later its vice-chairperson. In the ’70s, Singh and her husband Tejbir, on the invitation of the Richard and Sally Holkar, was at the centre of the revival of the Maheshwari sari through REHWA where she has continued to design saris for its looms over nearly five decades. In the ’80s, Singh played a role, as part of Pupul Jayakar’s team, in rolling out India’s first cultural global showcase, the Festivals of India, which were carefully curated expositions of the best of the legacy traditions of India in Europe, the US, Russia and Japan. In the ’90s, Singh did a project in Venkatgiri where she brought back, onto the looms, the old traditional designs she recalled from her memory.
What was it like to be making some of those decisions whose ripple effect impacted artisans, supply chains, and various other aspects of cultural legacy?
“The power of judgment can be dangerous. I am now 76 years old. In hindsight, I feel we needed to have empowered artisans in situ, where they lived and in the cultures they belonged to, instead of institutionalising skills and their rejuvenation in alien, unfamiliar spaces," she says. "I feel it substantially dilutes their inherent aesthetic sensibility. In alien situations, they are led by what they think the market demand is and do not lead the market, which was what had created the diverse tapestry of India. In Benaras, in Ilkal, in Bengal-Bihar, the infrastructure and patronage needs to be put in place, in situ, as it were. Ideally, marketing channels should run alongside the administrative channel from rural to urban India. The state needs to intervene, maybe create a ministry of creative industries, much like it has for commerce and industry.”
In her private domain
The new generation, she says, is the re-inventors of our legacies with many entrepreneurs entering the field, adopting looms, designing and marketing. Singh has worked with some of them such as Ahalya Matthan and her company, Registry of Sarees. The book also mentions Singh’s revival project, Saris of Memory, where she re-created saris of different kinds, including the Ahalyabai collection of Maheshwaris; the Indira Gandhi collection of saris she wore; the Prem Bery collection of blockprinted saris Bery did for the Central Cottage Industries Emporium; and her own designed Venkatagiri collection.
Singh is known for having one of the best personal collections of saris. Saris of Memory is like a swatchbook of some of the rarest of saris; it also lets you in to some of Singh’s favourite places to source the fabrics from. The book intentionally shows you a piece of Singh’s “private domain”.
Call it what you will, but this is a memoir of objects and a record of the time taken to source them. Its base is a love for textiles and 40-plus years of relationships with master textile artists and patrons of modern India. In the book, Singh has also also hollowed out her memory to to make room for the ‘little’ saris with the ‘big’ saris -- from her first one, a five-yard-long white Chanderi given by Leela Mulgaonkar to the rippling Thar leheriya, and her favourite Venkatgiris, the sari given to her by her husband from Kalakshetra, and her first Gujarat patola gifted her by her teacher and theatre artiste Shanta Gandhi of IPTA.
Each page of the book is dedicated to a special memory. They leave behind traces of conversations, stories and anecdotes with and about India’s design luminaries and experimenters, past and present, ranging from Riten Mozumdar and Rakesh Thakore to Sanjay Garg and Tarun Tahiliani. Saris of Memory is essentially a record of a past, where legacies and skills were nurtured with genuine commitment; it is a remembrance of time in the sun.