Eight kilometres from the city of Bhuj in Gujarat, the village of Bhujodi is the glowing nucleus of handicrafts, local textiles and pattern-making techniques that harken back to a bygone era.
This is not a village stuck in time; in fact, far from it. Between its mud-thatched roof huts and shops selling everything from Kutchi keepsakes to endless reams of fabrics, three communities thrive—the Vankars who specialise in tie-and-dye, scattered migrant communities who work in the Ajrak form of block-printing, and the weavers.
Ashok Siju, a 25-year-old weaver from Bhujodi, tells me that the first two communities have always experimented with the colour indigo and that his weaver community has started to dabble in it only in the past 30 years.
Siju’s fascination with the world of handlooms and dyeing as a child led him to establish a small studio, Jeevan Indigo, comprising just four people including himself—two weavers and one kaarigar.