A Winter in India

Yesterday we went to a German Christmas Fair, near the German Embassy. In this blog so far we have mostly talked about the Indian parts of living here, but of course Delhi is a very international and cosmopolitan city. We had seen a notice about this Christmas Fair, so off we went, expecting something like the Nuremberg Toy Fair that we had seen in December of 1968. That was cold and snowy, this was hot and sunny (despite the fact that it was 4.7 ∞ C during the night; it warms up fast as soon as the sun comes up).

Some of the fair was German: we had bratwurst and beer for lunch. But the rest was a masala (mixture). Christmas songs blaring in English by people like Perry Como. Papier Mache Christmas ornaments from Kashmir. And lots of upper-end Indian crafts. Beautiful things and many chances to talk with the crafts people. One German woman we talked with had gone to university in France for textile design, but has been here in Delhi for 15 years now. She says that if you are doing anything in the textile business, India is the place to be. Such a variety of materials and experienced workers. From our short stay here, I would have to agree with her. So I thought I would put up some photos to support her point.

Every different part of India has its own traditions, which have a lot to do with what the local, climate-dependent materials are, and what various conquerors have spent time there. In Chandigarh the traditional embroidery is called phulkari, and it is patterns worked in silk threads on cotton fabric. The top left photo is the bags they gave us at the Fulbright conference. The colors are definitely north Indian, Punjabi.

In Lucknow they have a very different style, called Chikan embroidery (pronounced “chicken”). The embroidery is done with cotton thread, traditionally on hand woven cotton cloth, but now done on a variety of fabrics. The top right photo shows two very different color combinations, both done on “georgette” (what we would call a very fine weave polyester).

At the Christmas Fair we found some pashmina wool scarves. Pashmina is the fine chin hairs of a type of goat. There had just been something in the newspaper warning people that if you see pashmina being offered for a cheap price, that it is fake, made in China, and, worse yet, even if it was actually made in India, the hairs were bootlegged from Chinese goats! Well, this booth was an NGO: Gharwal Women's Rural Development Association (the Gharwalis being a tribe in north India, in the Himalayan foothills). So I hope they were honest, and I hope the money was really going to the rural women, who they said not only do the spinning and weaving, but raise the goats. They had many photos of the women and goats. This wool is so fine but very strong because of the length of the fiber. Very soft and very warm. The lower right photo is Dave adopting the look of Delhi men dressed for winter.

We also talked with two wonderful young graduates of the NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology) here in Delhi. They are working with people in Assam (northeastern India) to help them develop other products besides the white silk scarves that get used across the Himalaya as blessings and welcome. He is the designer and she works with the crafters. They had wool scarves that were like fine clouds, a loose weave with the lengthwise threads (help me out here Jen and Beth and Mom, is that the warp or the woof?) of merino wool for strength and angora for the cross threads. So warm, but looked more like cotton candy. Then they were making scarves like the red and gold one in the lower left photo that are two layers of very fine silk, with metallic threads encased between them. The colors were amazing. The other scarf in the photo is “vegetarian” silk. I said, “What?” They said, yes, most silk is made by boiling the silkworm cocoons while the worm is still inside, and harvesting the long, single thread of silk. Vegetarian silk is when they wait until after the “worm” has hatched and flown off, and then they boil the empty cocoons. This gold scarf is made of the natural cocoon colors, undyed. Who knew??