on the khatri farm
I first met Rauf Khatri, a tenth-generation ajrakh artisan, at an exhibition in Delhi. His booth, which he and his brother staffed, was piled high with beautiful hand-printed textiles (although the piles daily dwindled in height as the three- and four-person deep crowds of customers in front of their booth snatched up the jewel-toned cloths). At some point in the nine-day exhibition, Rauf stopped by Avani’s booth, where I was helping out, and proceeded to grill me on the natural dyes used in Avani’s textiles. After he ascertained that I halfway knew what I was talking about, Rauf first introduced me to a bunch of his classmates from Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya, an innovative design school for working traditional artisans in Kutch, and then extended an invitation to visit his family’s ajrakh workshop.
Rauf and medicinal plants, processed and unprocessed
(the green stuff is a natural flu treatment, the package is gutkha, a mix of betel nut, tobacco, catechu, and lime).
The second week in January, I boarded a rattle-trap old bus (with my big backpack in my lap, since it was way too oversize to fit in the miniscule overhead compartment), and settled down for the bumpy one-and-half hour trip to Dhamadka. Dhamadka, in eastern Kutch, has been a center for ajrakh block-printing for many generations. For many months I had planned to visit the workshops of Abdul Razzaque, Abdul Jabbar, and Dr. Ismail Khatri, three now-famous brothers who, along with their late father, Mohammed Khatri, and their brood of children, have helped re-introduce the use of natural dyes in ajrakh printing.
cloth laid out to dry, khatri farm
I got off at Dhamadka and had my requisite post-bus ride cup of chai. Long strips of printed and dyed fabric, secured by strategically positioned stones, lay drying in the sun on both sides of the road, and lumbering bullock-driven carts piled high with yards of fabric were travelling down the highway alongside speeding box trucks and motorcycles. I asked at the chai stall for Abdul Razzaque’s workshop location. “Down that way,” the chai-walla gestured, and I set off down the dusty road, tuning down the wrong street before someone waved down an eight-year-old boy and told him to show me the way. I followed my trusty new guide down a narrow alley and was dropped off in front of a large white-walled complex. My ajrakh adventure had begun …