Kalamkari: Srikalahasti & Machilipatnam Traditions
Two towns in coastal Andhra, one Persian word, and the slow resurrection of a cotton cloth on which the Ramayana was once read aloud in village squares.
Kalamkari is Persian for 'pen work'. But under that single word there are two very different Indian traditions. In Srikalahasti, near Tirupati, masters draw the Ramayana and the Mahabharata on cotton cloth with a bamboo pen tipped in fermented iron-black dye. In Machilipatnam, on the Bay of Bengal coast, printers stamp Persian and Mughal floral patterns on cloth with carved teakwood blocks, the same cloth that Europe once called chintz and banned in its own markets to save its own mills. Both traditions nearly died during the colonial century. Both were saved by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay in the 1950s. Both got separate GI registrations in 2008. This lesson follows a living master at his kalam in a ground-floor workshop in Srikalahasti, and asks how a cloth that was once the book of the village came back from near-extinction.
A Workshop in Srikalahasti
In a whitewashed ground-floor workshop in Srikalahasti, in Andhra Pradesh, a short walk from the Kalahasteeswara temple, on an ordinary morning in the early 2020s, Jonnalagadda Niranjan sits cross-legged on a raw cotton sheet spread across the floor. In his right hand he holds a thin kalam, a pen made from a sharpened bamboo sliver wrapped at one end with a twist of raw wool. The wool holds the dye. The bamboo steers the line. The cloth on the floor in front of him is already six feet long. It has been washed, soaked in buffalo milk, and sun-dried twelve times.
He dips the kalam into a small earthen bowl. The bowl holds a liquid that looks almost black but is really a rust-coloured iron acetate, fermented for three weeks from jaggery, iron nails, and water. His hand is steady. The line he draws is thin as a hair and does not stop. Line by line, a figure begins to appear on the cloth. The figure is Rama. Above Rama the line continues, and Sita begins to form. Niranjan has drawn this scene, from memory, hundreds of times in his life. His father drew it before him. His father's father did not.
Because for almost a hundred years of the colonial century, nobody in this family drew anything. The kalam was put down. The workshops were empty. The tradition almost died. This lesson is the story of how it did not.
Two Names, One Word
The word Kalamkari comes from two Persian words. Kalam means pen. Kari means craftsmanship or work. Together it is 'pen work': cloth on which figures are drawn by hand, rather than printed with blocks.
That is only half the story, though. Under one name there are two very different Indian craft traditions, practised in two towns in coastal Andhra Pradesh about four hundred kilometres apart.