Reaping what you sew

Seventy-year-old Shamlu Dudeja has achieved a lot in her life and she puts it all down to the encouragement she received when she was young to get into handicrafts.

“When I was at school, there was a craft teacher from Bengal who taught me the kantha stitch,'' Dudeja recalls.

“My mother Sushila was a fine seamstress and under her vigilant eye, I used this form of embroidery to decorate the sleeves of blouses, the edge of saris and even tea cosies!''

Early life

Originally from Karachi, Dudeja's family moved to Delhi during the Partition.

After graduating with a maths degree in 1954 from Delhi University, she moved to Mumbai before marrying in 1962 and settling in Kolkata — a move followed by the birth of her two children.

In 1985, she attended a local handicrafts fair, where she met a group of women from surrounding villages — an encounter that proved significant.

“I asked them to experiment and do kantha embroidery on a single layer of a silk sari,'' she recalls.

“Three months later, they brought back their first three silk saris decorated with paisleys and flowers in a beautiful assortment of colours.

"I paid them and gave them some more saris to embroider.''

In January 1987, Dudeja had to undergo a double mastectomy. Determined to keep her mother's kantha project alive, her daughter Malika took charge.

“She introduced kantha on tailored garments, such as salwar-kurta sets,'' Dudeja says.

“I was so impressed that I decided to call the initiative Malika's Kantha Collection, or MKC.''

Fate then dealt Dudeja two more blows — the untimely deaths of her son and husband in the late 1990s.

To get over these tragedies, she immersed herself in charity work and established two initiatives — the Calcutta Foundation, which aims to help the less fortunate in the city, and the Self Help Enterprise (SHE), in 2000, which further developed her involvement with kantha.

“SHE is funded by MKC,'' Dudeja says. “It was set up with the aim of spreading greater awareness about kantha not just in India but throughout the world.''

Work and play

According to Dudeja, the artisans are able to fit SHE work into their daily routine.

“When they finish their housework, they sit in groups in their backyards and chat for an hour or two,'' she says.

“As they exchange family news, the workers embroider diligently, producing amazing forms using only the simple running stitch.

"The completed textiles are brought back to the SHE office and the women are paid accordingly.''

Those who have leadership skills are promoted to team-leader status and employed to recruit and train new artisans. “SHE has about 12 team leaders,'' she says.

“These girls commute between their homes, our office in Kolkata and the homes in the interiors of Bengal, where the kantha artisans live.''

Opportunity to learn

Education is also a fundamental objective, Dudeja explains.

“Through the team leaders, SHE works with these groups and gives them an opportunity to learn additional skills, such as sewing, using natural dyes and awareness about health, hygiene and self-defence,'' she says.

In recent years, the project has fostered a lot of global interest.

“Apart from India, the kantha textiles are sold in Paris, Melbourne and Sante Fe,'' Dudeja says.

Although most people would be well into retirement in their seventies, Dudeja says she has no plans to withdraw from her charity ventures.

“The one goal in my life is to give back to society as much as I have got from it,'' she says passionately. “My desire is to continue to work with my projects until my last breath.''