Mela Phulkari festival showcases how a dying art is given new lease of life

There must be only about 3,000 women in all of Punjab who make phulkari. Most of it is made in Dukheri, near Patiala, by underage boys who are brought in for the day from UP,” says Harinder Singh, the revivalist behind the Mela Phulkari festival and owner of the retail chain 1469. 

The reason for the puzzling title of the chain is quickly made clear: 1469 was the birth year of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh religion. The brand, which has six stores between New Delhi, Chandigarh, Karnal and Jalandhar, showcases the cultural heritage of Punjab with handcrafted phulkari, quirky T-shirts, calligraphy in Gurmukhi, handmade chai cups, as well as phulkari-based accessories and souvenirs.

A hand-woven phulkari dress

Phulkari is a traditional handwork from Punjab that possibly originates from the Persian art of Gulkari. It literally means floral work (phul for flower and kari for work). One of the first references to it is found in the poem “Heer Ranjha” by Waris Shah (1725-1790), in which Heer is mentioned as having phulkari articles in her trousseau. Phulkari was considered auspicious, and was a painstaking labour of love taken on by mothers and grandmothers to be presented on occasions like daughters’ weddings or the birth of a child. The khaddar or coarse cotton cloth on which they were made symbolised the hard life that Punjabi women lived, and the colourful threads represented their dreams and aspirations. In bagh (garden) phulkari the entire fabric is covered with embroidery; adha bagh (half garden) features scattered embroidery.

“Phulkari was a skill girls learnt at home, like making pickles. It was not made to be sold. Even during Partition, when the first priority was to look after yourself, there were piles of phulkari chaddars that were later just used to make cotton quilts and bedcovers. We started collecting what we could twenty years ago, when we realised that real baghs no longer existed,” says Kirandeep Kaur, co-founder of 1469 and Mela Phulkari.

History of phulkari art at the Mandi House Metro station in Delhi

In the markets today are mostly machine-made phulkari created using CADD (computer-aided draft & design) on fabric. How does one recognise the real thing? Look for variations in the stitches and for looser embroidery and knots on the reverse. A handwoven phulkari piece can sell for up to Rs 1 00,000. At 1469, a vintage Bagh sells for approximately Rs  60,000 while a dupatta costs Rs  3,000-6,000. “80 per cent of what you see in the market is produced around Delhi and Surat and sold by wholesalers. Imagine, most of the phulkari you see no longer has anything to do with Punjab,” interjects Singh.

 The duo began to revive the near-extinct craft by giving women in villages across Punjab fabric on which to make baghs. They then started working with the women-folk of farmers in Sangrur who had committed suicide to help create an income for their households.

There was little awareness about phulkari. “Even their grandmothers said that they couldn’t teach girls the old way of creating phulkari because their eyesight was too poor and their hands couldn’t move fast enough. 1496 worked with an NGO and, slowly, five girls taught themselves and opened five more centres,” says Kaur. Today, each woman earns between Rs 6,000 and Rs 10,000 a month from their embroidery.

 This Mela has other unusual elements, including phulkari-print turban cloths. There are also installations, including one representing the legendary love stories of Sassi-Pannu, Mirza-Sahiban, Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal and Laila-Majnu. Other installations represent the writers and poets of Punjab: Dhani Ram Chatrik, Amrita Pritam, Bhai Vir Singh, Prof Purab Singh, Allah Yaar Khan Yogi. An installation by Panjab Digital Library shows the historical forts of Punjab; others represent the pots, traditional agrarian tools, sports and stamps of Punjab.

 The mela will also display another resurrected tradition, the “Malwai Giddha”. The folk dance is also called “Babeyan da Giddha” because it was originally performed by babey (old men).

A turban installation at the Mela Phulkari festival

The troupe simultaneously also plays instruments like the algoza (a bamboo double flute) and sapp (a wooden instrument that has many x shaped pieces); the bagdu and tumbi (single-string plucking instruments); chimta (tongs with brass bells) and duff (a frame drum with bells attached). Both the dance and the instruments were dying out in Punjab. Harinder Singh says that these are amongst the state’s most spectacular treasures. He should know. After all, he’s the man who introduced folk songs like the original “Pataka Guddi” song to Imtiaz Ali and AR Rahman.

A phulkari-embroidered headscarf

Mela Phulkari 5 can be viewed at India Habitat Centre in Delhi from February 10 to 19 Story of Phulkari: Journey through Panjab will be on at the Mandi House Metro Station from February to April 2018.