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Lure of the Silk Route
The ICCR is showcasing the work of two city designers to give a fillip to India?s relations with Central Asia.
Central Asia is closer to Delhi than Chennai or Bangkok, yet Tashkent and Almaty ring a distant bell when the names pop up in casual conversations.
Separated from Delhi by two and a half hours of flying time, Tashkent’s Indian links are older than Raj Kapoor (who’s an icon in Uzbekistan’s capital, though Mera Naam Joker is fading from our collective memory) and Lal Bahadur Shastri (who met his end in this historic city). Tashkent, as choreographer Vidyun Singh reminds us, is a four-hour drive from Samarkand, Babar’s home and birthplace of the Mughal Empire. Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan, now better-known as Central Asia’s Hong Kong, is seeing a growing Indian presence, not the least of it being L. N. Mittal’s steel mills. And you’re also likely to find more Kathak students in Almaty than in Delhi.
There couldn’t be a more fertile ground for the revival of the Festival of India series by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR), whose next stops will be Houston and South America (notably Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela). Says ICCR Director-General Rakesh Kumar: “The Central Asian nations are very high on the agenda of the Ministry of External Affairs because they’re closer to us than many of our state capitals, they’re strategically important, and they’re sitting on a sea of crude oil and gas.”
As they say, cultural diplomacy is rooted in geopolitics. And ICCR is presenting the most contemporary face of Indian culture by showcasing the work of leading fashion designer Kavita Bhartia and the up-and-coming Sonia Jetleey, besides organising an exhibition of Indian paintings, performances by folk artistes and talks on cultural themes.
The fashion show, though, will be the highlight of the Festival of India, and appropriately so – India and Uzbekistan, for instance, are two of seven countries where the tradition of ikat is alive and getting stronger. The idea behind the show, designed by the talented duo of Asha Kochhar and Vidyun Singh, is to present the versatility of our fashion designers, who seamlessly blend classical motifs and embroideries with contemporary international silhouettes. No wonder, it will feature film clips on the shared cultural heritage of India and Central Asia, and a Kathak sequence, surely a first in the history of Indian fashion shows.
“These are contemporary clothes with an Indian spirit,” says Bhartia, who’s as much a fashion designer as a fairy godmother of emerging designers. “They’re for the woman of the world.” Jetleey, a business administration grad who studied fashion design at Sophia, Mumbai, and NIFT, New Delhi, says her collection is inspired by India (you can see it in her vibrant colour palette and embroideries that combine coloured stones with dori work) but designed to appeal to a universal market of young working women. Assures Bhartia: “It won’t be a one-time show because we’re looking at long-term business with Central Asia.” Diplomacy, culture, business – there couldn’t be a headier mix.
