Visit to Calico Museum

I have been in Ahmedabad for more than a year now, but I never took the trouble to explore this city. One of the disadvantages of a very good campus life, at times, is that the person gets a lot detached from the city in which the campus is situated. So, I decided to use this break to explore things around me. I sought advice from one of my local friends who suggested me to visit Calico museum.

Calico museum is one of the finest textile museums in the world. It houses handicrafts and textiles not only from various parts of India but also from far-flung places liek Egypt and Phillipines. These hundreds of years old fabric are strong evidences of textile trade between these countries.

There are more than 60 rooms containing various varieties of cloth, right from Kashmiri Pashmina wool to Patola and Pichwai. The place boasts of excellent management and a really knowledgeable guide conversant in Gujarati, Hindi and English. The jute work from Bengal on Purdahs, The pichwai depicting various Krishna-lilas and the chitrakathas on the clothes telling various stories were simply captivating. The guide made us tour in a way that we could understand the fine cultural link between the cloth, the era, the people and their culture. How clothes could say about a person's profession, social stature and even religion.

There are a few things that I think should be changed with this museum. First, there is need for extensive publicity of the museum to spread awareness about it. Even the local auto guys do not know where it is. Next, there is need for commercialization of the museum. The free entry can be made into a charged entry and they can entertain people in more shifts. Right now, there is only one shift. Overall, a nice learning experience and some things to know about the great Indian culture and to feel proud about the glorious past. The guide also told us about how various artisans are starving today due to lack of support of the old art and hence, these glorious traditions are dying down an unnatural death. I believe, there is an urgent need to support these craftsmen and an entrepreneur can carve out a profitable export venture with sufficient investments in marketing and branding of these handicrafts.