Danced Imprints

A block-printing town, and all the moves it holds.

There is a town called Bagru about thirty kilometres southwest of Jaipur, on the road towards Ajmer. I went looking for it for the first time, though I had no real excuse to have waited so long. I grew up in Jaipur with printed cloth all around me, so close that I had stopped seeing it.

The Chhipa community has worked here for generations. It took standing in Bagru, with the process moving in front of me, to understand what I had been looking at all my life.

Four-generation-old wooden blocks featuring Chaugandi ki buti (left) and Patashi ki buti (right).

Every Chhipa (block printer) handles the block in their own way. The blocks themselves vary in size and shape, but the signature is in the contact, the way the wood is brought down to meet the cloth. I tried it myself, like a noob, and understood at once that the thing I had filed away as simple stamping, asks for far more than a steady hand.

What I had not expected was the choreography. A 90s Bollywood number was playing on the radio, and the Chhipa was keeping its time. His right hand held the block. As it came down, the heel of his palm struck the back of it, and the thud dropped into the beat like percussion.

His left thumb and middle finger steadied the block and edged it forward, keeping the line true. Then the block lifted away and left its motif behind, a footprint pressed into the cloth, the same step carried the length of the fabric.

Images: Niyati Hirani