HYDERABAD: Reserving the dying crafts in villages is an arduous task. It takes a lot of courage and strength to revive the lost art and crafts of a specific village but two women Sudha Rani Mullapudi and Chitra Sood have left no stone unturned to restore the craft glory of Kondapalli village. Sudha Rani, the CEO and Co- Founder of Abhihaara Socail Enterprise and Chitra Sood, Co- Founder of The Institute of Advanced Studies in Complex Choices have been working on reviving Kondapalli crafts by training woman artisans of the village.
While asking them about this noble initiative and collaboration with each other’s work, Sudha Rani explains, “Abhihaara is into building capacities of woman farmers, weavers and other artisans. So, we started working with two families in Kondapalli in Andhra Pradesh before the pandemic and the whole idea was to introduce natural dyes in Kondapalli as they have been using commercial paints on sarees and dress materials which are harmful. We are now encouraging them use natural dyes. We started small with two artisans and then we realised we don’t have the resources to scale up our training centre.
Then we got in touch with Chitra and her husband Anil who came forward to listen to our story and they have helped reach a larger audience. In the process we relaised that women in Kondapalli are interested in learning new skills and we help them in earning a better income. Chitra and Anil also helped us take the process using natural dyes to handlooms made in Siddipet. We started a camp for five months in Kondapalli which included 10 women and we got in Kotaya Chari garu to train them. We have trained 10 women for the first time in the history of Kondapalli to restore 400-year-old crafts and now these women are taking orders from Lepakshi and the Telangana tourism department. Our partnership started in 2021.”
About the collaboration with Abhihaara and how she put in a step forward to support this initiative Chitra says, “What was very important for us is that we are looking for how communities could sustain themselves over the longterm with specific focus on arts and crafts. I think what was interesting for us from Abhihaara was skill development and looking at communities, specifically women who are interested in building their long-term capabilities in a skill and provide them a resource to find a market for their product. We are also seeing an upscale of the intake of natural products as everyone is concerned about the environment.”
Mentioning the lost art and crafts of Kondaplli that they have been focusing on to revive, Sudha says, “In Ikat people have revived Telia Rumal (scarves), but we using natural dyes in sarees. We are also getting into functional products and we want to ensure that Kondapalli art is used in tables, chairs, mobiles and more. We also curating products that are contemporary.”
Adding to this, says Chitra, “We are looking at alternate usage patterns, I have personally used Abhihaara’s handlooms and we are looking at it for furnishings and home decor. We are trying to diversify and make the crafts available to a larger set of people.”
Talking about how women artisans have been taking up the workshops, Sudha says, “Today the rural
livelihood and persevering the art is all in the hands of women. women. Across In men are migrating
to different professions . In Kondapalli, there are no young men in the art and crafts business.
There are only women who want to take this forward and if we ensure that they earn well, the craft is going to survive or this will die in the next few years.”
About taking up training in other villages, Sudha says, “We want to get into clusters and understand
things. For now, we want to revive more crafts at Kondapalli as women are interested to learn the craft of wooden decor and saree making. We will be expanding the workshops in the village here.”