World Craft City | Let Srinagar thrive again Premium

Here’s hoping that being named World Craft City will bring back international tourists and buyers, and recharge the region’s skills and makers 

How lovely, how obvious, how appropriate that Srinagar be named a World Craft City.

Every lane, every home, every street corner is full of the sights, sounds and presence of weavers and spinners, shawl makers and embroiderers, papier-mâché painters, walnut wood carvers, brass and copper workers, jewellers, namda rug felters, wicker workers, dyers, and printers. The pattern maker’s sing-song chant of the talim echo as the carpet karigars deftly tie knots in time with its beat.

Kashmiri craft is an important means of employment and earning; it is also a form of self-expression and identity. In a population of just over 10 million, nearly 3.50 lakh people are directly engaged in craft. In recent decades, even women have turned to embroidery, long a male preserve, as their husbands and fathers were absent — dead, in jail, or in an Indian metro eking out a living.

As I read the happy news, my mind flashes back to 2005. I’m in Jan Mohammad’s tiny loft in the old city, getting fabric block-printed for embroidery. The scene is untouched by the years: shelves stretched to the ceiling with intricately carved mulberry wood blocks, some over a 100 years old. Their motifs of chinar leaves, paisleys, kingfishers and iris are inspired by the flora and fauna of the Valley.

Jan Mohammad kneels at a low table, his pheran and long fingers equally impregnated with colour. A samovar of salt tea by his side, a hookah bubbling nearby. The sound of the block, coated with rice flour and resin, a rhythmic counterpoint to the wheezing music of his ancient transistor. His austere face is intense, with the concentration of an artist.

A muezzin chants, and other calls to prayer resonate in the quiet air. A couple of women sit embroidering. The regular puk-puk of their ari needles puncturing the taut cloth on their embroidery frames has a soothing quality — a sound familiar in the Valley over the centuries.

But sadly, the tranquillity is an illusion. A sudden crack of gunfire bizarrely echoes Jan Mohammad’s fist banging on his block. Smoke fills the air. A stone smashes the window. Peering out, we see a mob hurling rocks, a gun battle with armoured jeeps and police, shops being set afire. They are protesting the death of two young boys killed in a raid.