Karigars Reimagine Bombay in Threads and Stitches at Mumbai's Khotachiwadi

As challenging as it is to navigate the current Dhobi Ghat, it was for the designer Kailash Poojary and the group of artisans he worked with to create an embroidered artwork depicting the Ghat. "The suspended garments had to suggest movement without straying from the original reference," he recounts. 

Bombay, the city that has always been dotted with layers, often stacked atop one another, and even buildings, of which Dhobi Ghat has been a recent attraction for both heritage lovers and photographers, even offering wedding photo shoots. The narrow lanes make one feel as if entering the congested homes, even if one intends to just cross to take a glance, all while the hanging clothes form its skyline. 

For Poojary, who has been working for the last two decades in fashion, textiles, and hand embroidery, creating this region of Bombay demanded a "balance maintained through daily reviews, careful conversations and close collaboration with the artisans", about which one of the artisans, Sabhir Shaikh, who belongs to West Bengal, says, "At times, understanding Mr. Poojary’s vision and his attention to the smallest details was quite challenging for us."

Sometimes, as Shaikh notes, Poojary would notice even the tiniest brick detail or ask them to reverse a panel and embroider on its reverse side just to add a bit more depth and detail. "This kind of work demands a great deal of patience and understanding," Shaikh adds.

The result of this patience is the hand-embroidered 'Echoes of Bombay', on display at the historic area of Khotachiwadi at 47-A, a venue for art, craft, and design housed in a 19th-century Portuguese-style home in one of Bombay’s original villages. 

The owner of this spot and Baro Market's founder, Srila Chatterjee, who met Kailash Poojary a year ago over this, shares: "We live in a city that is changing so rapidly that even frequent visitors often find it unrecognisable. More than ever, we need to hold on to our history before it ceases to be even a memory."

Bombay to Mumbai, a tension through hand embroidery

Even Kailash Poojary and the artists held on to the history and the forgotten Bombay, to reimagine them with the threads, which took a year's time. The foundation of Bombay, with the embroidered Map of old Mumbai – The Seven Islands highlight the early settlements, while the landmarks like Kala Ghoda here are a reminder of the cultural roots.

Blonging to a generation that witnessed Bombay transform into Mumbai, Poojary has attempted to document the transition through the hand-embroidered work, displaying the city’s other iconic landmarks like Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and the Rajabai Tower, Flora Fountain, Gateway of India, CST and the BMC, with each artwork that hits with nostalgia with a depiction of city's old rawness, labour, and architectural grandeur.

The designer's relations with the city had to begin before even the idea behind this artwork. As a fashion student, he would often wander through the city’s historic precincts, taking in the scale of the buildings, their intricate details, and the stories embedded within them, which, he says, stayed with him. "I have long been fascinated by the architecture of Old Bombay. When I thought of exploring art, the first thought that came to mind was Mumbai," he says, referring to the exhibition.

The final piece, Skyline of Bombay, brings together the city’s most iconic structures in an imagined composition shaped by memory rather than geography. But what adds to the overall beauty are the image-rich community spaces like Dhobi Ghat, the dense lanes, and the community life of Bhendi Bazaar, and the lived realities of Old Bombay, which is currently witnessing rapid urbanisation. 

Collecting old images and experimenting for a 'sense of depth'

While Poojary involved a few artisans at the beginning to understand the right stitch language and overall aesthetic, he worked with four artists later, over 450 days, to complete the work. Mazhar Hussain, another artist who worked on it, says that the biggest challenge was to understand what Poojary wanted.

"It wasn’t merely about following an artwork. His instructions were always very clear and precise—what thread to use, and how to layer the threads to create thickness,"  Hussain, who belongs to U.P., says, adding, "This process taught us to think beyond routine embroidery."

Discussing further with Local Samosa, Poojary says that the focus was never on a "decorative or merely aesthetic interpretation of the monuments". "Instead, we wanted their defining features to be clearly visible and consciously noticed.... Hours were spent perfecting minute elements so that the structure, character and essence of each landmark came through authentically in the thread." 

"There were many instances where I would open up sections of the work if I felt it was not moving in the right direction, or if a particular thread needed to be thin and not thick," Poojary shares. However, there was more to be taken care of.

"Recreating time-worn images gathered during the research into textured, layered embroidery demanded continuous experimentation, and we worked extensively on outlining buildings so they would stand out and sometimes adding stitches from the reverse side to create a subtle sense of depth," he further says.

Similarly, the artists have used the knots to highlight lines and edges. "Every day, the worktable was set up with the khatchouk and minute details were added gradually," the designer says.

Khotachiwadi's art space owner, Chatterjee, shares, "I watched some of these pieces come to life, one stitch at a time, with the fine, hair-like threads."

For a city where the minute details of transition are not even changing its landscape gradually, rather, rapidly, these Mumbai landmarks woven in stitches are standing as living history till March 15 in the form of faded postcards of the past, at yet another spot witnessing cultural changes at a great speed.