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THE CHARM OF VEGETABLE DYES
She had a small but exquisite range of soft scarves, table cloths, duputtas and khadi cloth bleached and unbleached at her stall and in response to a query, she smiled, “Yes, they’ve been dyed using floral colours…do you know that it can take 10 kg of any colourful flower to colour one kg of cotton!” She hails from an unusual background. She was born in Florence where both her parents were devoted to Gandhian concerns and causes. They were peace activists – her father a Professor of Sociology and Peace Science at Florence University, and her mother a teacher involved in voluntary social service. She herself was a kindergarten teacher employed in a local municipal crèche for a while and engaged in varied extracurricular activities to do with peace marches and demonstrations against nuclear power plants in Italy. While attending several workshops on non-violence, conflict resolution, spiritual research and so on, she came into contact with several foreign and Indian peace activists. Somewhere along the way she got fascinated by the art of hand weaving and textile designing and did workshops with Italian experts Angela Giordano, Graziella Guidotti, and Paola Besana. Italy has a tradition of hand weaving too, said Ms. Alessandra L’Abate. She worked as teacher of weaving for a couple of years in Italy before destiny brought her to India in 1989, here she discovered and worked with several Gandhian communities in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, New Delhi. After that there was no looking back for she got more and more deeply engaged with the booming khadi movement in India, despite the fact that many of the old weaving techniques had fallen prey to the popularity of synthetic fabrics. In 1994 she came across the Gandhi Rural Rehabilitation centre, directed by Mr. S. Kumar in Alampoondi village in Gingee Taluka, Tamilnadu. She was so impressed that she decided to help the Centre in producing new designs and marketing their products at local fairs and later on in international markets…so involved did she become in various khadi centres that her “spiritual father” freedom fighter and Sarvodaya worker Jagannathan, fondly christened her anew as J. Chandra. And now she is better known in weaving circles as J. Chandra! Alessandra is familiar with Goa and sometimes sets up a stall at Ingo’s Saturday Night Market for her khadi collection. She travels extensively in India and abroad educating herself further and promoting the use of natural fabrics, “It is very eco-friendly to use vegetable dyes extracted from organic sources such as roots, bark, flowers…of course most flowers are seasonal…but one can get as many as 120 shades from these many natural sources like babool bark, indigo, kumkum, madder, catechu, neem leaf and alum…...” Her dupattas have been dyed with floral colours and perhaps soon one may be able to cherish a dupatta communicating the fragrance of the flower used! Mr. Bharathan, a master technician at the Natural Dye Unit at Gandhigram in Tamilnadu is working on it, “And one may get a dupatta or dress which gives the fragrance of marigolds at least after nine washes…Bharathan is trying to get it.” That would be something really revolutionary. Since 1999 Ms. Alessandra L’Abate, alias J. Chandra, has been offering her services to the Gandhigram Trust to support about 200 weavers and spinners for the purpose of improving khadi fabrics, expanding their market and encouraging the use and production of eco-friendly goods e.g. khadi cottons, natural dyes, wooden buttons, etc. Personally, she confided, pointing to her unbleached khadi blouse, she doesn’t know why khadi has to be bleached pristine white at all, “The natural cream colour is so beautiful.” One may see her around in Goa more often because she has a home here. And if you ever come across one of her ultra soft dupattas, be sure to buy some of them although they’re expensive (e.g. Rs.275). They come in pretty natural dark pink, indigo blue, saffron yellow….colours which really one make one feel closer to Mother Earth!
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