Joy Bimal Roy

I found this Kalamkari piece in a plastic bag stuffed with other bits and pieces of fabric in the inner recesses of my sister Yashodhara’s¹ cupboard. It was obviously a pallav piece that had seen better days, when it had been part of a saree. My sister Aparajita gasped when...

Kantha is a kind of embroidery native to Bengal and is almost exclusively practised by women, many of them from home. It is a source of income for a lot of rural women who probably sell their exquisite craft to a middleman for a song, not knowing the astronomical price...

Could love be having to say you are a sari? It certainly could. This border belonged to a sari gifted to my sister Yashodhara¹ 35 years ago, on 4th September 1985 by Partha Biswas, Aditi Biswas’s husband. Our dear friend Maina Bhagat’s son Romil had come to stay with us in 1985...

The original saree (header pic; on the extreme left) was a Garad saree from Bengal, worn traditionally by married women when performing a puja. It is made of pure silk and has the classic traditional red border. I guess it borders (no pun intended) on blasphemy to meddle with...