Malkha

Shoba Narayan has written a lovely piece on malkha in yesterday's Mint. She stumbled onto malkha on a chance visit to the Sampoorn exhibition in Bangalore last month, and took the trouble to call and interview several people associated with it. In the article Shoba has wrestled with a description of the various stages of cotton textile production, something most people can't be bothered with. The point is that unless one knows something about how damaging the mainstream processes are, one cannot appreciate the vast difference in the way the malkha process using Gramaspinner machinery treats the delicate cotton fibre. At the malkha stall at various exhibitions we have a chart showing the stages of both the mainstream and the malkha process, but most customers are attracted just to the look and feel of the fabric itself.

For all the Bangaloreans who missed the Sampoorn show, the good news is that malkha is going to be in Bangalore again next month, this time at Dastkar's Nature Bazar.