At Odisha Festival, artisans tell stories THROUGH FABRIC, COLOUR, TRADITION

The air inside Aparajita Mahila Samhiti carries the faint rustle of fabric and the earthy scent of clay.

- OUR CORRESPONDENT

At every corner of the Odisha Festival, organised by Women’s Moksha, hands are at work — showing off the shimmer of embroidered sarees, the bold colours of painted jute, and the earthy charm of terracotta figurines. Walking through the narrow aisles feels less like browsing a market and more like entering a living museum, where each stall is not just a shopfront but a story waiting to be told.

At one corner of the exhibition, Bhojraj Meher from Odisha adjusts the folds of a Sambalpuri Ikat sari, the fabric catching the light in subtle shifts of colour. His family has been weaving for generations — children first given small tasks, then slowly trusted with more — and he himself began at the age of eleven. “We watched our fathers and mothers at the loom,’ he recalls, “and they would involve us bit by bit until it became second nature.”

‘The process he describes is painstaking: starting with plain cotton yarn, spinning it, tying it into intricate knots, dyeing it, and finally weaving the fabric into patterns that often take more than a month to complete. The most difficult stage, he admits, is also the most satisfying — knotting the threads to carry designs that reveal themselves only once the fabric is dyed and stretched out on the loom.