There is a story about master craftsman Maneklal Gajjar from when he was invited to Belgium, shortly after receiving a National Award from the then President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy in 1979. At 6’2” and strikingly handsome, Gajjar always made it a point to dress well, which meant wearing a dhoti and kurta with elan. But, he did not want to visit Europe in a dhoti and kurta so he borrowed a safari suit for his first plane ride. When his cousin arrived at Ahmedabad station to wish Gajjar bon voyage, he could not find him. It was only after he returned dejected that the cousin found out that Gajjar was at the station all along, surrounded by a crowd, but unrecognisable in his Western wear. This is one of the anecdotes about Gajjar that Mala Pradeep Sinha, a textile designer from Vadodara, Gujarat, and Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, faculty member of the School of Design, Ambedkar University, Delhi, enjoy telling. Gajjar, who died in 2012, was a textile block-maker and master craftsman whose practice redefined the understanding of craft and design and cemented a rich legacy. On August 10, Sinha and Balasubrahmanyan will make a presentation about the legacy of Gajjar in Pune, titled ‘Layers Upon Layers’. The event is being organised by the India Foundation for the Arts, which gave Sinha a grant under the Arts Research programme, and Parijat Foundation. “I am coming to Pune 45 years after I started my journey in crafts from the city to talk about craft to an audience who, we believe, is not very oriented with the craft of Maneklal Gajjar,” says Sinha. She had known Gajjar since her student days at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Sinha would go to him very often at his house in Pethapur, Gujarat, and he, too, came to the institute so that the students developed a deep relationship with him. “In the 1960s, Ahmedabad was undergoing a cultural renaissance after it became a capital of Gujarat after the Bombay Presidency was dissolved. Institutions were being built and stalwarts from every field were being invited to create iconic works of architecture and art. Maneklal, who was in touch with the people at the forefront of change, realised that the world was rapidly transforming and he needed to do the same to make his craft relevant,” says Sinha. Her work reveals the “aesthetics, social moorings and the questions around tradition, craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, design, patronage and their interrelationships” of one of India’s leading craftspersons. It helped that Gajjar was a meticulous recordkeeper and archivist of his creations. But, it was when Sinha began research that she realised that, despite being friends with him, she was only now getting to know him really well. The session in Pune is a part of sharing what she found.
