Malkha

At the Sampoorn exhibition which is now running at Chitra Kala Parishat, Bangalore, Malkha has a stall [no 59] outdoors, between Weavers' Wheel and Tribal Health Initiative, as Chandra of WW had requested, though the other fabric stalls are indoors. This is the first exposure to customers for Chandraiah, [right, back, in the picture below], the unit manager from Mahbubnagar, and he finds it rather daunting!

Malkha prints are popular as usual, but one drawback is that our solid colours don't match the colours of the prints. Though both are vegetable colours, they come out differently in yarn dyeing and in printing. We're hoping to get plain fabric to match the prints for future exhibitions by getting the fabric dyed in Kutch.

We constantly re-discover that the whole process of cloth making is unfamiliar to the general public, so the difference in the technology of malkha vis-a-vis the conventional process does not really matter to them. We have a chart that shows the difference which we show customers, but obviously it cannot tell the whole story... Production processes and their ecological impact are really hidden from view. A good introduction is 'The Story of Stuff', a video available on the net. Someone should do a similar one specifically for cotton cloth.