Shyam Ahuja: PORTFOLIO TWO

AD pays tribute to Shyam Ahuja-who passed away last year the man who introduced the world to India's distinct flat-woven dhurrie and its artisanal charm.

- Aditya Ahuja

No story on Shyam Ahuja, an obstinate bull of a man, can begin without the dhurrie. Hard as it may be to imagine today, the dhurrie-the most iconic and ubiquitous of Indian flatweaves-had all but disappeared by the 1960s. There were no weavers, no buyers, and no interest for a textile that could trace its lineage back to the Harappan civilization. My grandfather helped change that, and with it, altered the course of Indian handloom.

Shyam, then a successful businessman and wool buyer for Tattersfield & Co., Philadelphia, stumbled upon the dhurrie on a visit to a jail workshop in Rajasthan in 1968. Determined to find an outlet for his creative bent, and recognizing the dhurrie's potential as a woven canvas, he resolved to sell the textile in America, a market that was familiar to him. Yet in those days, he encountered an industry that wanted nothing to do with him. He would often recount those moments to me later in life, "I wasn't even allowed to cross the doorsteps of most major furnishings stores," he'd say, telling me how they had no regard for Indian craftsmanship. These slights, often tinged with a racial bias and delivered with condescension, made him physically ill. Yet, he persevered, cold-calling his way to meetings till he finally met Irwin Corey, of the Rosecore Carpet Company in New York, and received his first export order: one cotton dhurrie.