The Place
It was the first time we begin our official journey to understand "what do we really mean by Folks Market"
The place was Surajkund, a place where craft fair is organised every year. Its strategically located in Faridabad, Haryana bordering New Delhi, the capital of India.
Lots and lots of artisans, craft workers from different places of the world gather here to showcase their products. Some of them are working in pretty organized way others struggled so far and now trying to be organized. We could see artisans coming all the way from Tamil Nadu, Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujrat etc. It was like "mini -India". Not only this but we realized that Surajkund Fair has transgressed the international boundary. Many craft men, artisans flocked here from places like Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Congo, Bhutan, and Tajikistan. There must be many more but we might not have seen for wanting of time. The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), an association of 8 south asian countries in the areas like Energy, Biotech, Rural upliftment etc was conspicuous by its presence in the form of SABAH that is SAARC Business Association for Home Based Workers started in 2009-10.
The Blessing
A life size statue of Lord Buddha was visible at the entrance of the fair as if HE was blessing these bastions of the traditions and culture. By the shear size and calmness of Lord Buddha, the heads kept bowing down. We took it as an auspicious beginning of Folks Market.
Journey and the Crafters
We started with the silk city of the India, that is Bhagalpur (Bihar,India). The silk manufactured here is distinct and is known as Tussah or Tusser Silk. Mr Naresh Tanti participates in Surajkund Fair every year. The texture and fabric of the Sarees, he weaved and other clothing were so smooth as if you lost the control of your hand..it just wanted to slip through!!. The vibrant colors, designs and a cheerful expectation of sales in the eyes of Mr Tanti were something that we carried and move forward.
Going forward we almost instantly stopped at few paintings of Rajasthani Flavour. Only one word could describe our feeling for the remarkable art.."brilliant". It was the exhibition shop of Ms Kiran Soni Gupta, a serving bureaucrat (IAS) of Rajasthan cadre. Her other introductions are women activist, reformist, humanist besides artist and bureaucrats. The paintings displayed showed varied flavours like Rajasthani, Abstract, Tanjore Paintings and many more. All this left us wondering about the rarity..given her extremely busy public life and such brilliance with brush. We eagerly look forward meeting her.
As we inched ahead (yes we literally were inching, it was very crowdy) we could make out an usual dense crowd near by one exhibition. "What was that", we asked each other. Man it was none other than the shop of Congo. It was the huge crowd puller. The items displayed were rare and hallmark of the African culture. Black magic items, some masks, items made from the animal hairs (not sure though), boots, coats and many more accessories. Some of them dressed in tribal outfit that was so much African. Feathers, knotted hairs, lots of crafted jeweleries marked the crown that they were wearing. It was such a wonderful treat to eyes. Guess culture is the binding factor, we may not realize that we find so much of a 'connect' with other culture that we do not even realize it. We met Bob Abedi and Pmisenga, well built and smiling guys who travelled all the way from Congo to India to showcase their skills and indeed they got more eye balls then they might have expected. Interestingly French language is spoken widely in Congo.!!
We continued and moved on...
On way we stopped for a while to see blue poppy handicrafts from Bhutan, silk and Pashmina from Nepal, beautiful jute bags from Bangladesh. These bags were displayed by a woman development organization from Bangladesh TARANGO. We met the CEO Ms Kohinoor and tried to peep in the artistic and pretty laborious work done by Bangladeshi Women to meet the two squares of the meal every day.
Enroute we also met Ghulam Nabi Lone and Abdul Mazid, two young men owning different shops displaying Pashmina and cotton+silk items. They were extremely friendly and even posed for us!!!
Our last exploration was with women entreprenure from Afghanistan. They are being helped by the SDF that is SAARC Development Fund Secretariat. The collection of stoles, kurtis and other apparels was beautiful. From the far it might look like any other apparel but the moment you feel it closely, you will find amazing designs, textures. Ms Waseema Been the prominent lady in the exhibition walked us through about the process and what it meant to display these items for them and for scores of households back in war-ravaged Afghanistan.
Retreat
"We should have come earlier",was the general sentiments in the team. But whoa...we had been exploring for more than 6 hours in the same craft fair. Time spent was not less, rather the fair was very very BIG. We retreated when the fair was ended for the day.
It was like a dream, we were mesmerized with the colorful ambience of the fair and so much engrossed as if we never parted from such surroundings. As if we were very much part of this climate. However our dream was broken the moment we came out. The entire colorful world that we were experiencing so far became colourless!!. The machine was everywhere. The world we left in Surajkund Fair was not the part of machine. That was pure human skills. It celebrated the special creation of the God, human beings and that's the dream we see for Folks Market.
Whatever we do, we must celebrate the FOLKS!!
