Silk

I’ve spent an afternoon immersed in the anatomy of a million yarns today.

Trying to figure out if its cotton, viscose, silk, cotton-silk, georgette and so on, as if my fingertips now have a mind of their own. Stay a bit longer and you will familiarize yourself and I hope, like me, internalize, that Paithani, Bandani, Muga and so on are subsets of the same fabric that drew in British invaders from across the sea more than a century ago. And while colonization is no way justifiable, if you spend a minute or so draped in the fabric, you will out of sheer greed, bend logic and at the very least, try to understand.

Silk is worthy of theft.

Silk is wothy of lust.

Silk is worthy of devotion.

Couple that with threadwork in myriad combinations; Kantha, Zardozi, Gold Work, Chikankari, and 6 others kinds of stitches impossible to memorize in a single 7th grade crafts class (which is what today has felt like) and you have, what I now believe is, a testament to Indian craftsmanship and creativity.

A shotgun master class in all kinds of awesome, and for that my dear Patna Market, you have my heart, but more importantly my respect.