Stranger Earth

 

I don’t know this city without your footprints

marking out the roads, buildings, the streetlights

glinting on your glasses, your voice mapping

the terrain of neighbourhoods, days and nights.

I don’t know this place, it’s strangely different –

the waters an acrid shade of grey and white,

the neon signs of advertisements pulsing

like a news ticker from a disaster site.

Everything is where it was, yet it isn’t

as if the ground has shifted, ever so slight,

as if the earth’s somehow lost its mooring,

as if the sky’s fallen from a great height.

Grief is a half done crossword by your chair,

an absence the shape of your feet on the stairs.

Compartmentalise

 

You can watch the birds from the terrace here.

The tangle of wires slices the sky thin

and shrinks the views, but still, it’s been a good year -

the mynah’s back, so are the crow and pigeon.

The  doves and, in their season, the cuckoos.

There’s birdsong, even if you don’t get the views.

 

The drongos like beads on an abacus

the sparrows of unremarkable throats -

ordinary plumage’s all around us.

Put off that search for remote scenic spots.

Bird calls rise with the light and urban fumes,

the city ebbs from the terrace and the rooms.

~~~

Gosh, May's ending already? The months are vanishing faster than ever, I don't know if that's a good, time-flies-when-you're-happy/busy sign or an ominous one of days outstripping my capacity to keep up. Let's go for the positive one - I'm all for the feel good, steady boat themes. 

Lots happening as usual - workmen in the house, trips to the eye doctors, an antho submission, thank goodness the war noises have stopped, let's keep everything here small, personal, worm eye level. Because what's happening out in the world is kind of overwhelming, to put it mildly. I'm borrowing a line from one of my favourite fictional characters - 'I'll think about that tomorrow.'

Another line from another favourite character, real not fictional this time - 'a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between does what he wants to do.' That's Bob Dylan, his birthday went by a couple days back, happy birthday sirji! - from this fan. 

By his definition, which I expect holds for women too, I am success enough. I listen for the birdsong. Focus on the wires, treetops, clouds. Block out the incessant noise at ground level. Read a little. Write a little. Compartmentalise. 

Have a happy-busy, time-flies type week ahead.

Choose your own title

 

View from shikara. May-June 1981. A long ago and far away Kashmir.

All night long I dozed fitfully

dreamt of elephants crossing the Alps,

of Carthage and Rome. Deep furrows of salt.

And oaks and pines, higher than gothic spires

made into Viking masts sailing cold seas.

The children kept waking, fretting, calling.

Mother. Father. What’s that? Is that shelling?

Why does the horizon glow so eerie red?

What is that horrible smell on the breeze?

I quietened them, wrapped them in my steeled arms

inches from where my heart was racing against theirs

sang them lullabies my grandmothers once crooned.

Go to sleep, the light of my eyes,

horizons get eerie just before sunrise,

thunder carries in the stillness before dawn,

they’re somewhere far over the mountains,

somewhere far from home.

 

Grandmothers used to say that everything

that you were destined for, or that was destined

for you, had your name written clear on it –

grains, cups, ganga jom’na paar, scars, bullets.

They were women gnarled by hardships, moulded

by wars, collaterally damaged inside

and out. Fault lines, frontlines and famines grew

them to formidable heights and shapes, staunch,

unflinching as fortresses. They had the right

lullabies to soothe children to sleep

during battles and in peacetimes. They could

slice fruits translucently thin and feed hundreds

from one handful of rice and two fishes.

They knew how to stare down famines, disease,

unknown, eerie red horizons. Burnt paddies

wafting in on the breeze. They rarely slept

through the night. Dreaming wasn’t an option.

 

The dawn comes in overcast. No more sound.

No birdsong, nor call to prayer, not even

the faintest shelling, nothing but the clouds

emptied of the death threats. The horizon

innocent of flashes and our senses

suspicious of this explosive silence.

The street’s pockmarked with thumbprints of conflict.

The news comes later, trickles in through phones

on grapevines of fear. There’s a ceasefire.

Is it over? Father? Shall we go back

to school? May I go fishing now, Mother?

An army vehicle clatters down the street

checking for last evacuees. I scoop up

my grandmother’s old hand knitted blanket.

She’d knitted my name in it. We step out

and I notice, as if for the first time –

the door has my name carved on it as well.

Title 1) Mother's Day 2025

Title 2) Carved names

Title 3) Ceasefire

Title 4) Compose your own

Please let me know your choice in the comments. The title is the hardest part.

I'm glad there's a ceasefire. Anything that brings peace closer is to be welcomed. Not sure it will lead to anything lasting though. And I'm gutted at the way it has come about. 

Once upon a time our PMs used to refuse to be pressurised, to let other countries, no matter how mighty their global standing, meddle in our business. We didn't have a top ten economy, but we had a spine and some respect out in the world. Now we meekly let another nation broker ceasefires and decide our tariff policies without a cheep. What can I say? I miss the sagacity, the statesmanship, the reverence for country over party, the commitment to democratic values and the political acumen of my previous leaders. 

Once you've lived in a country led by towering personalities, it is awful hard to live with petty, braggadocious, incompetent politicians who don't have a shred of self respect or give a @#*& about the very people who've elected them to the position they hold.

I hope your week has gone peacefully and that you're nowhere near any situation that requires a ceasefire to be brokered. 

Duodecad

 

Well, yeah, survived the challenge for the 12th year. Which Google Chacha tells me is called a duodecad. So I'm a duodecadal survivor. I thoroughly enjoyed getting back with properly researched, immersive posts for the A-Z. I left a lot of stuff out, which I knew I'd have to, because textiles comprise a range from carpets to shawls to towels to turbans to dupattas to handkerchiefs, from little socks and underclothing to tents and sails and sheets and quilts. Even though I resolutely left all of that out and focussed on the saris only (I had to leave some saris out too, Bomkai, Arni, Ilkal, Dharmavaram, the list goes on) - it still made me feel awful - Pashmina shawls! Kashmiri carpets! Assamese Gamusas! Bandhej dupattas! - how can they be excluded?? The non-saree textiles can make an A-Z theme by themselves.

I read widely but not as deeply as I wanted, that is an unreachable target. 'Wide' this year meant less than 200 blogs, I was reminded of Alex saying that was what the challenge was like in its first year. I wasn't there for that, I joined in the 3rd of 4th year I think. Deep reading always comes at the cost of deep writing, I've learnt that from my first A-Z experiences. So that's that, c'est la vie.

Thank you to the hosts and all those who visited, read, commented and generally kept things lively and interesting. 

Will I be back next year? A cautiously optimistic yes - circumstances permitting. Hopefully, see ya next year, same time same place. 

Z is for ... Zenith

 

All this month I am writing about our amazing Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

Z is for Zari

Zari woven motif.

It is not known when exactly humans discovered gold, but this shining metal has been prized for its decorative properties from prehistorical times. The earliest known use of gold is by the Egyptians in the fourth millennium BCE, where it was used mainly for jewellery and ornamentation.

In India, the Rig Veda (1500 BCE) mentions Hiranya Vastra or cloth of gold, the Ramayana (500 BCE) mentions, among other things – Rama’s gold studded footwear (also a feature of the grave goods of some Egyptian Pharaohs and/or their consorts) and Sita's jewellery and garments. The Manusmriti (200 BCE) depicts Kuvera, the god of wealth, in golden garments and possessing untold amounts of the metal.

The World Gold Council estimates that Indian women hold around 11% of the worldwide gold reserves, mostly in the form of jewellery, about 24,000 MT. That's more gold than the reserves of USA, Germany and Switzerland combined. No Indian wedding is complete without some gift of gold and bridal gold-worked sarees. It’s utterly baffling when you compare the per capita GDP of the countries involved. Just saying.  In short, Indian culture has a very deep history of being disproportionately fascinated with gold. Given this background, it is not at all surprising that gold (and also silver) have found their way into Indian textiles also. 

 

Benarasi Tanchoi weave. 

Zari is basically gold or metallic yarn used for embellishing textiles and Zardosi is gold embroidery. Pure zari is made by wrapping silver on a core silk yarn and gilding with gold. In modern times the silver has been replaced by copper due to cost considerations.  Half fine zari uses a copper wire electroplated with silver then further gilded with gold. Tested zari is made by using a copper-silver alloy core wire which is then gilded with gold. There's imitation zari also, basically coating threads with gold coloured powders. Fast zari is made from copper with minute amounts of silver, no gold involved. Pure zari does not lose its shine. Half fine zari retains its shine longer than tested zari. Imitation and fast zari lose their shine after a few washes only. 

The word  zari and the zardosi technique both came to India from Persia, first in the 2nd millennium BCE along the ancient silk routes. The art of zari flourished and reached its zenith under Mughal rule (1526-1857), especially under Akbar the Great (1542-1605), the third emperor of the dynasty. He brought in expert artisans from Persia and set up workshops around his empire to train local textile weavers. Except for Aurangzeb, all the subsequent rulers were great patrons of arts and culture, so textile weaving generally and zari woven Benarasis particularly reached a pinnacle during the Mughal period. Varanasi or Benaras which was a textile weaving centre for millennia, became famous for its zari worked brocades from the 16th century onwards. Of course these were restricted for the use of the elites only. The original motifs were dropped in favour of more floral and foliate Persian styles - these became an identifying characteristic of these weaves. 

Kadhua weave saree with close space floral/foliate or 'jangla' motif.

We've seen other zari worked traditional sarees : the Paithani yesterday, the Kanchipuram and the Chanderi earlier in this A-Z series. Today we'll take a look at the famous Benarasi weaves. 

Valkalam - a more recent weave of Benarasi. 

Benarasi can be classified into different groups  based on 1) the fabric (pure silk, called Katan in the trade, organza, georgette, etc., blended fabrics are a recent innovation) 2) the weaving style and motifs such as Jangla, Butidar, Tanchoi, Ektara, Valkalam, Kadhua, Phekwa, Meenakari etc. Read more about the history of Benarasi sarees in this article and see how a hand woven Benarasi saree is created in the video below:

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Did you know that while Varanasi (known as Kashi in antiquity) is the centre point of Benarasi weaves, the handloom Benarasi zone includes more than a million people in Jaunpur, Gorakhpur, Chandauli, Bhadohi and Azamgarh districts? 

Thank you for reading. A special vote of thanks to those who've supported this entire series. And many congrats to all A-Zers who've survived the challenge!

A-Z Challenge 2025 

Y is for ... Yonks ... n ... Yelllow

 

All this month I am writing about amazing Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

Y is for Yarn

The spinning of yarn began long before recorded history. It is likely that the first yarns were used as humans gave up nomadism in favour of settled life and agriculture around 10,000 years ago. However, there is much uncertainty in the exact years when humans first started wearing clothes, and estimates range from 3 million years ago to 40,000 years ago. Incidentally, the oldest needles found so far have been dated to around 50,000 years ago. Just like the loom weights, the eyed needle is a crucial bit of archeological evidence of stitched stuff (and therefore yarn!) 

A study on human body lice, which are uniquely adapted to their specific environment and therefore cannot exist without the wearing of garments, dates clothing to around 170,000 years ago.  These would probably be animal skins of course, not woven fabric. But however fuzzy the timing may be, what all these findings show without a shred of doubt is that yarn - the product of twisting fibres together, has extremely ancient  roots indeed. Read more here.

The oldest archaeological evidence of weaving actually goes back to the Paleolithic (Stone Age), confirmed through a study done in the 1990s/2000. Clay imprints of woven textiles and the clothing depicted on Venus figurines were analysed and dated. Read more about this fascinating search for these 'soft technologies' employed by Paleolithic humans here  and here. 

The research shows that weaving was already happening some 28-30,000 years ago, and it was sophisticated enough that researchers felt textiles must have been woven for many years prior to get to that stage of advancement.

The actual extant evidence of woven textiles dates to around 5000 BCE - the most ancient ones found are linens from Egypt. Sericulture began in Neolithic China in the 4th millennium BCE. Textile evidence in India, at the Indus Valley Civilisation sites, also goes back to around 6000 years ago. As we've seen before early spindles predated the wheel by quite some time. 

The earliest spindles  were not much more than a piece of notched bone or a stick with a rock. The spinning wheel or 'charkha' was invented in somewhere in India and/or the Middle East between the 6th and 11th century. This then diffused along the ancient trade routes and each region modified the spinning wheel to suit the local fibres. With the Industrial Revolution, the Spinning Jenny was invented and spinning of yarns, which was a cottage scale manual activity all through the centuries, got progressively mechanised and commercialised from the 18th century onwards. 

Till about hundred years ago, all yarns were spun from natural fibres - cotton, silk, flax, jute, hemp and wool of various animals. In the last century or so, synthetic fibres were intoduced first nylon and then polyester which completely altered the textiles industry. Today there are many varieties of yarns produced across the world from natural and manmade fibres and also their blends. However, with greater consciousness about environmental impact of synthetic materials, there has been a growing demand for recyclable and biodegradable yarns. 

India is the second largest global producer of yarns, it produces cotton, cotton blends and manmade yarns in significant quantities. Recently bamboo silk and banana silk yarn have been introduced and are used for producing sarees. Jute sarees are also another new eco-friendly introduction. Read about the top yarn producers here. 

Y is for Yeola

Remember the Paithani? - the signature saree from Maharashtra.  It is one of the oldest recorded sarees - being woven in a town called Paithan dating back to the 400-300 BCE. At the time, the town was called Pratishthana and ruled by a dynasty known as the Satavahana.  Paithan is  one of the earliest silk saree weaving centres in India and sent this opulent real gold woven fabric to the Graeco-Roman world. Paithanis, like most other silk and gold luxury textiles, were reserved for the use of royalty and/or temple offerings only. These silk sarees are woven in the tapestry technique where the motifs seem to float on a dense golden background. 

With time empires rose and fell. Artisans migrated into the region and also left as capitals moved. The original Paithani weavers left Paithan and settled in Yeola sometime in the 17th century. Today the majority of the Paithani sarees are woven in Yeola on jacquard looms, though the original fully hand woven tapestry technique saree has been revived successfully in Paithan also.  Watch this video on the history of the Paithani saree below and read about the different types of Paithani sarees here. 

~~~

Did you know that Indian textile artisans used a range of different materials to dye their yarns yellow? Turmeric, the yellow larkspur and pomegranate rinds are some plant materials which gave yellow dyes. Read more here. 

Thank you for reading. And happy last days of A-Zing to you if you are participating. 

A-Z Challenge 2025 

X is for ...Xrikey!! ... n ...Xood Xrief!! ... n... general Xemesis!!

 

All this month I am writing about Xquisite Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

Spot the X

I'm going to Xtricate myself from the ghastly predicament that is X by clutching at whatever straws I can find with a mishmash of factoids and images. So here goes.

First things first - spot the Xs in these textiles hereunder:

Batik on Bishnupur silk saree.

Floral print on Tussar saree.

Warli block print detail on Tussar saree. The Warli 

are an indigenous tribe from Maharashtra, they 

decorate their mud walls with art using these stylised 

geometric motifs representing nature and humans.  

Look at the negative spaces in the aanchal!
Pochampally single ikat cotton saree.

Rudraksha border  on a silk ikat saree from Odisha.

X is for cultural Xchange

Indian textiles have been traded across the world and have influenced the fashions in Europe, Far East and America from ancient times onwards. However, trade is always a two way process. Over many centuries, Indian textiles themselves have also been cross-pollinated by cultural exchanges through trade and travel. Read about the broad influences of the outside world on Indian textiles here and then, consider the following:

• There's some evidence that the IVC had knowledge of wild silks, but that was lost when that Civilisation collapsed around 1500 - 1400 BCE. It is widely believed that sericulture (of mulberry silk) was introduced into India from China sometime in the 2nd/1st millennium BCE. 

• Persian influence on Indian textiles is massive and obvious. From brocade weaving (Benarasi) to textile motifs (buti/buta, shikargah) to actual words used for specific techniques (jamdani, chikankari)  show the myriad ways the Persian Empire impacted Indian textiles.

• Batik has come to India from Indonesia. In Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore brought back Batik pieces and had it introduced through the Arts School or Kala Bhavan of the Bishwa Bharati university he established. It combined there with  Bengal's unique aesthetics and motifs to form a genre of sarees/textiles by itself. 

• Indian Parsi (Zoroastrian refugees from Iran who fled to India from Iran in the 8th century) traders brought back exquisite, white-on-white embroidered Chinese fabrics in the 19th century, which the Parsi community ladies wore as sarees. This is how the 'Parsee Gara' embroidered saree has Chinese motifs. Due to the high demand for these sarees, a community of Chinese embroiderers came to settle in Gujarat, plied their trade and hawked their wares door-to-door in the affluent neighbourhoods of Bombay and other major cities in India. Read more about the Parsi Gara here and here.

• Delicate French lace found its way into Indian royal wardrobes in the late 19th/early 20th century as sarees for the royal ladies. By the 1960s/70s (machine-made)  lace sarees were popular enough to be recorded as a trend. Read more about that here. We've already seen how Marie Antoinette's chemise a la reine influenced Bengali ladies fashions. It was adapted to wear with the saree to cover the shoulders and upper body. Along with French lace, French chiffon sarees were also much prized after Indian royal princesses/queens  (remember Indira Devi? of Cooch Behar) and prominent elites wore them. 

• Incidentally, lace making was brought to India by European missionaries and nuns who came in after Vasco da Gama opened up the sea route to India in 1498. They taught lace making in their convents  to the women who lived in the surroundings, along with other European crochet and embroidery styles. These are collectively known as 'convent embroidery.' There is no systematic record of hand made lace or convent embroidery in India. However, lace edgings on Indian garments such as women's kurtas, dupattas and sarees, as well as saree blouses and petticoats are quite popular. The Bengali word for the petticoat is 'shaya,' derived from the Portuguese 'saiote' - another small mark of the European cultural exchange.

• Madras Checks are thought to have been influenced by the Scottish plaids in the 1800s after the British set up a trading post in Madras, though the fabrics themselves can be traced back to at least the 13th century. Read more about the Madras checks here. 

• British influence is of course not restricted to the Madras Checks alone. Victorian sensibilities of the 19th century fundamentally altered the way sarees were worn in India. The blouse and the petticoat were added to Indian women's wardrobes as bare bodied saree draping was not considered decent.

 

So there we have it - China, Indonesia, Persia, Portugal, France and finally Britain. I'm sure this is not Xhaustive though, there would be other cultures who've inspired/influenced the Indian textile industry lurking somewhere in the annals of history. But this is all there is time for today and I think it's more than sufficient to be getting along with. Gosh, am I glad that X situation's behind me now!

~~~

Did you know that Xuan Zang, the Chinese monk, wrote about Indian textiles that he encountered in his extensive travels in this country in the 7th century?  He mentions among others, Mathura as a hub of cotton weaving and records that silk was produced and traded in Kamarupa, that is Assam. He also wrote about the habits and customs of the people of the kingdoms he visited, including their faith and modes of dress. Seriously helpful for the historians. And for the A-Z, phew!

Thank you for reading. And happy A-Zing to you for the end days of the challenge if you are participating. 

A-Z Challenge 2025 

W is for ... Wonderful ... n ... Worm

 

All this month I am writing about wonderful Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

W is for Wild

We have already looked at Tussar a few days earlier which is a non-mulberry variety of silk. There are others too - Eri and Muga. Muga is an exclusive GI tagged product of Assam in the North East of India, Eri silk is produced through out the North East in other states also. Here is a silk map that gives the exact picture: 

Image credit

So these three types of silks - Tussar, Muga and Eri got from moth species which are not domesticated, are collectively known as Wild or Vanya silks. We have already talked about Tussar in an earlier post. Here we take a look at Muga, which is the most expensive silk that is produced in India, on account of both its quality, lustre and rarity. Have a look at the Indian sericulture statistics  to appreciate why Muga is as costly as it is. The state of Assam in the North East of India is the only producer of Muga silk in the world, the wild moth from which the silk is obtained is named  Antheraea assamensis - might have a clue to that!

The origins of Muga, as with most textiles, in fact most things in India, is shrouded is myth and magic. Sericulture in Assam is an ancient industry and its exact origins cannot be determined  with any degree of precision. (Note  that  Assam is in the North East of India and not within the core area of the Indus Valley Civilisation. The IVC sites are mainly located in modern day Pakistan and North Western India - Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana.) The first civilisations/kingdoms rose in the 1st millennium CE in Assam, but Assam silks may have predated those. 

Because the ancient epic Ramayana (composed ~ 800-400 BCE) refers obliquely to sericulture in Assam thus - it is mentioned in the Kishkindha Kanda that 'travelling east one has to pass through  Magadha (present day Bihar), Anga (Bihar/West Bengal), Pundra (West Bengal and Bangladesh)  and then through the Kosha-karanam-bhumi,' (lit the land of the cocoon rearers). If that is not a reference to sericulture, I don't know what is. 

So lets say by the 1st millennium BCE, sericulture was being practiced in Assam. Further proof comes from the Arthashashtra written in the 3rd century BCE - both the colour of the silk and the superior quality of the fabrics are mentioned as originating from Kamarupa, the ancient name for Assam. There are further references in texts written in the 7th century CE and 11th century and so on, right down to details of the production process and draping of deities. Read more about it here.  

It is thought that sericulture arrived in Assam with Tibeto-Burman migrants from China around 3000-2000 BCE. There are other texts that show that silk arrived in India through Assam. Muga gained prominence during the time of the Ahom dynasty in the 13th century. The Ahoms ruled for six centuries during which Muga was reserved for royalty/aristocracy as the region's most luxurious fabric. Read the story of Muga here. And watch this video to understand the role Muga plays in Indian sericulture and how the wild silk worm that produces it is threatened. 

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Did you know that there are over 500 species of silkworms? Only four among these are of commecial importance though - Bombyx mori (mulberry silk), Antheraea assamensis (muga silk) Antharaea mylitta (tussar silk) and Samia ricini (eri silk). 

Thank you for reading. And happy A-Zing to you for the end days of the challenge if you are participating. 

A-Z Challenge 2025 

V is for ... Vivid ... n ... Various

 

All this month I am writing about vibrant Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

V is for Vegetable 

Before we get into the main topic, I'd just like to mention Venkatagiri sarees. These are woven in Andhra Pradesh, with a history going back to the 1700s. Read about these sarees here and/or watch a short video about them below:

There's also the Valkalam saree, but we'll visit that in a later post. It is a saree from the super ancient weaving hub of Benaras or Varanasi, which needs time and a bit of elaboration to do it justice. Can't do that here. 

Incidentally, Vijayanagar was a Hindu Empire that lasted for two centuries (1336-1565) and was an important historical milestone in South India. Though geographically much smaller and of shorter duration than the Mughal Empire in the North, it left a similar cultural legacy in literature, architecture and art of the southern region. It had a roaring trade in textiles, woven in centres like Coimbatore, Mysore and Pulicat.

Image credit

And here is the Mughal Empire as a quick comparison - 

Image credit

Right, that's enough already. Let's get into the main topic for today - vegetable dyes.

Like everything textile-related, the roots of the vibrant colours of Indian textiles, pardon the pun, goes back to the Valley. The Indus Valley. Dye vats and fragments of madder-dyed cotton wrapped around a silver pot have been found in Mohenjo-Daro, it shows an advanced level of knowledge of mordant dyeing and colour fixing. Similarly, the Priest-king we saw at the start of the series wears what is believed widely to be a madder dyed textile robe. Artisans knew the use of madder and indigo to obtain vivid red and blue for textile dyeing four/five thousand years ago. In fact for long centuries Indian red and blue were kind of colour monopolies in the textile trade. Not just that, they had precise knowledge and control of the dyeing process to get a range of shades from 'dawn flushed' as mentioned in a Chinese text in the 7th century, to deep, intense reds and blues. Banabhatta, a poet and writer from Kanyakubja (modern day Kannauj, UP) mentions costly tie and dyed textiles in various designs, also in the 7th century. A French traveller in the 18th century mentions the colour fastness of Indian textiles that lasted the entire life of the garments. In short, there is no dearth of evidence on the knowledge and skillfulness of Indian textile artisans regarding colours/dyes.

The Indus Valley Civilisation vanished by 1500-1400 BCE, there's no tangible archaeological record for a few centuries within India itself. However, the Greek historian and physician Ctesian mentions brightly coloured cotton from India in the 5th century BCE. Ctesian was the court physician in the Persian Empire at the time, known for his texts Persica and Indica - these show that Indian textiles continued to be exported to Persia during the 1st millennium BCE even after the collapse of the IVC and the rise of newer dynasties and empires. This trade in Indian textiles continued and expanded to progressively include Greece, Rome and rest of Europe, as well as the New World, right through to the 18th century, when the Industrial Revolution and discriminatory colonial policies brought Indian trade supremacy to an end. 

Natural dyes can be classified into three broad types - vegetable, animal and mineral - according to their source. Another broad classification can be as per their application techniques - vat dyes, mordant dyes and direct dyes. Vat dyes are those which are insoluble  in water but become soluble when treated with a reducing agent, i.e. they require 'vatting.' Mordant dyes are those that require a binder, usually a metal salt, to adhere to the fabric. Direct dyes, as the name implies, are dyes that can be applied straight to the textiles. The most common mordant used was alum and iron sulphate. Other  mordants were also known but they were extremely toxic and impact both the artisans and the environment and so have been discontinued in modern times. Many dyes and also mordants are malodorous therefore dyeing communities tended to operate in separate enclaves outside the main towns. 

Dyeing can be done on fibre itself before spinning ('dyed in the wool'), after spinning or 'yarn-dyed' and after weaving that is 'piece dyed.' Indian sarees use both the latter processes extensively. For example, Batik and Ajrakh sarees are printed as pieces, while most Kanchipuram and Ikat sarees are woven after dyeing the yarn. 

Some of the more important vegetable dyes that Indian artisans used were  Indigo (blue), Madder (red , burgundy and lilac), Turmeric (yellow), Saffron (orange to yellow) Safflower, Parrot tree flowers and Pomegranate. Read more about Indian dyes used here and here.  

Synthetic dyes were developed in mid-19th century and changed the textile industry - natural dyes were replaced by their synthetic counterparts. These were easier and quicker to produce on a mass scale, and unlike natural dyes, could be used for manmade fibres/fabrics as well. Note that the first man made fibres happened to be created in the 19th century too. 

In recent times, there is a movement towards the use of natural dyes as the negative environmental impact of chemical dyes have become apparent and consumer consciousness about health and sustainable practices has grown. 

Watch this short film on the history of Indian natural dyes below. Vibrant coloured textiles remain a part of life in modern India and continue to play an important role in traditional attires of both men and women. 

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Did you know that lac is a natural dye? - it's obtained from insect resin and used to dye textiles. It yields colours ranging from crimson to burgundy red and deep purple. 

Thank you for reading. And happy A-Zing to you for the end days of the challenge if you are participating. 

A-Z Challenge 2025