Textile Reading
Handmade in India: A Geographic Encylopedia of Indian Handcrafts – Aditi Ranjan and M P Ranjan
Indian textile motifs – https://www.selvedge.org/blogs/selvedge/motifs-speak-a-vocabulary-of-indian-textile-motifs
Indian Textiles – John Gillow
Inspiration Kantha: Creative Stitchery and Quilting with Asia’s Ancient Technique – Anna Hergert
Quilts of India: Timeless Textiles – Patrick J Finn
Quilt Story: The Cultural Heritage – India, Bangladesh, Nepal & Pakistan – Patrick J Finn
Suraiya Hasan Bose: Weaving a Legacy – Radhika Singh: The life of Suraiya apa, as she is lovingly called, has been an expression of passion and commitment to the cause of handloom from pre-Independence India to the present day. This book documents the life story of the unsung legend, who is responsible for bringing back forgotten weaves like himru and mashru.
Textiles of the Banjara: Cloth and Culture of a Wandering Tribe – Charlotte Kwon and Tim McLaughlin
The Art of the Dyer in Kutch: Traditional Block Printed Textiles – Culture and Technique – Dr Ismail Khatri, Judy Frater and Latha Tummuru
The Fabric of India – Rosemary Crill (V&A Museum)
The Stories Hidden in the Ancient Indian Craft of Kantha: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221020-the-stories-hidden-in-the-ancient-indian-craft-of-kantha
The Fabric of Civilization – How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel. Not specifically on India, but gives context to India’s textiles. The story of humanity is the story of textiles – as old as civilisation itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool coloured with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo’s David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code.
Three thousand stitches – Ordinary people extraordinary lives by Sudha Murty. So often, it’s the simplest acts of courage that touch the lives of others. Sudha Murty, through the exceptional work of the Infosys Foundation as well as through her own youth, family life and travels-encounters many such stories… and she tells them in her characteristically clear-eyed, warm-hearted way. She talks candidly about the meaningful impact of her work in the devadasi community, her trials and tribulations as the only female student in her engineering college and the unexpected and inspiring consequences of her father’s kindness. From the quiet joy of discovering the reach of Indian cinema and the origins of Indian vegetables to the shallowness of judging others based on appearances, these are everyday struggles and victories, large and small. Unmasking both the beauty and ugliness of human nature, each of the real-life stories in this collection is reflective of a life lived with grace.
Traditional Indian textiles – John Gillow and Nicholas Barnard
General Reading
A Princess Remembers : The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur – Gayatri Devi is the daughter of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the widow of the Maharaja of Jaipur. She was raised in a sumptuous palace staffed with 500 servants, shot her first panther when she was twelve and has appeared on the lists of the world’s most beautiful women. Gayatri Devi describes her carefree tomboy childhood; her secret six-year courtship with the dashing, internationally renowned polo player, Jai the Maharaja of Jaipur; and her marriage and entrance into the City Palace of the ‘pink city’ where she had to adjust to unfamiliar customs and life with his two wives. Jai’s liberating influence, combined with Gayatri Devi’s own strong character, took her well beyond the traditionally limited activities of a Maharani. This is an intimate look at the extraordinary life of one of the world’s most fascinating women and an informal history of the princely states of India, from the height of the princes’ power to their present state of de-recognition.
Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran – about family and memory, community and race, but is ultimately a love letter to storytelling and how our stories shape who we are.
India by Steven McCurry (photographer) – This collection of emotive and beautiful images taken across the Indian subcontinent explores the lives of everyday people in extraordinary settings through the lens of Steve McCurry, one of the world’s most admired photographers
Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex von Tunzelmann – A re-creation of one of the key moments of twentieth-century history: the partition and independence of India, and the final days of the Raj.
Song of the Sun God by Shankari Chandran – about the wisdom, mistakes and sacrifices of our past that enable us to live more freely in the future. Nala and Rajan, a young couple, begin their married life in 1946, on the eve of Ceylon’s independence from Britain.
The Company Quartet (The Anarchy, White Mughals, Return of a King and The Last Mughal) by William Dalrymple – From multi-award-winning and bestselling historian William Dalrymple, this four-book collection chronicles the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of the East India Company. Nine Lives – In Search of the Sacred in Modern India is by the same author. Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. Exquisite and mesmerising, this travel book explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the vortex of the region’s rapid change.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.
The Shortest History of India – From the World’s Oldest Civilization to Its Largest Democracy – A Retelling for Our Times by John Zubrzycki
Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali – Published in 1940 and set in nineteenth-century India between two revolutionary moments of change, Twilight in Delhi brings history alive, depicting most movingly the loss of an entire culture and way of life. As Bonamy Dobree said, “It releases us into a different and quite complete world. Mr. Ahmed Ali makes us hear and smell Delhi…hear the flutter of pigeons’ wings, the cries of itinerant vendors, the calls to prayer, the howls of mourners, the chants of qawwals, smell jasmine and sewage, frying ghee and burning wood.”
Kingdom’s End – Selected stories,
Bitter Fruit – The very best of Saadat Hasan Manto,
Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition
And other works by Saadat Hasan Manto, the most widely read and the most controversial short-story writer in Urdu. Several of his works have been translated into English (including those listed above). Manto’s stories were mostly written against the milieu of the Partition. Born on 11 May 1912 at Sambrala in Punjab’s Ludhiana District, his writing career spanned over two decades. He died a few months short of his forty-third birthday, in January 1955, in Lahore. Manto produced twenty-two collections of short stories, one novel, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of reminiscences and many scripts for films.
Red Earth and Pouring rain by Vikran Chandra – an epic tale of nineteenth-century India – of Sanjay, a poet,and Sikander, a warrior; of hoofbeats thundering through the streets of Calcutta; of great wars and love affairs and a city gone mad with poetry. Woven into this story are the adventures of a young Indian criss-crossing America in a car with his friends.
What the body remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin – The year is 1937, and Roop, a sixteen-year-old Sikh girl from a small village in Northwestern India, has just been married to Sardarji, a wealthy man in his forties. She is a second wife, married without a dowry in the hope that she will bear children, because Sardarji’s first wife, Satya, a proud, beautiful, combative woman whom he deeply loves, is childless. The wedding has been conducted in haste, and kept secret from Satya until after the fact. Angered and insulted, she does little to disguise her hatred of Roop, and secretly plans to be rid of her after she has served her purpose and given Sardarji a son.
More great suggestions may be found at the following links
10 Must read books by Indian women authors
10 of the best novels set in India
10 best Indian novels and travel books
Viewing
All We Imagine As Light (2024)
Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Laapataa Ladies (2023)
The Lunchbox
Monsoon Wedding
Darjeeling Limited
Midnight’s Children
Lion
Slumdog Millionaire
The Ganges with Sue Perkins – BBC series
The Story of India – series with historian Michael Wood on Apple TV
Great Indian Railway Journeys (with Michael Portillo) – BBC series
Joanna Lumley’s India
All that breathes (2022 documentary) – As legions of birds fall from New Delhi’s darkening skies, and the city smolders with social unrest, two brothers race to save a casualty of the turbulent times: the black kite, a majestic bird of prey essential to their city’s ecosystem
Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations – Rajasthan – Series 2, Episode 5 (aired May 29, 2006). India is a land of colour, aroma, kind people, and delicious cuisine. Anthony heads off to the more desolate region of Rajasthan in the northwest corner of the continent.
Luke Nyugen’s India – Luke Nguyen circumnavigates southern India, discovering the sounds, colours and cuisines of the region, meeting local cooks and chefs, who introduce him to the world of Indian cuisine. https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/luke-nguyens-india
The Good Karma Hospital – Drama series, filmed in coastal southern India
Listening
Empire: a podcast hosted by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand. The first series looks at the British in India: The East India Company, The Raj, Gandhi, Independence and Partition. In the opening episode, William and Anita discuss the rise of The East India Company, exploring how a small corporation founded in Tudor England – with only a handful of employees – came to rule India. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-east-india-company/id1639561921?i=1000576194086
Satyagraha – an opera by Philip Glass with libretto in Sanskrit
The Toilet Warrior – Mark Balla was on a business trip to India when he met two young men on a train. They invited him back to their home in one of the world’s biggest slums. That visit changed the course of his life: it was where he learned many millions of people go about their lives with no access to a toilet – at home, work or school. Mark became obsessed and began learning as much as he could about the situation, particularly in relation to Indian schools. From there, he met Mr Toilet, Poop Guy, and eventually Mark earned the title of Toilet Warrior. Link to the podcast is HERE
Note: The above list is by no means exhaustive. If you’d like to recommend a book or movie that you’ve enjoyed or found informative and inspiring, please email us at retreatrecreate@gmail.com
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