00:00 (Music)
00:06 Good evening.
00:07 And it's such an honor to be with all of you
00:10 and speak about what I absolutely love to talk about,
00:14 something that is so close to my heart,
00:17 and none of you would even need to guess.
00:21 They've asked me to talk about the colors of India.
00:24 Maybe I could do this in my sleep.
00:27 I mean, I often feel that to share my colors
00:30 has not been my profession, but my destiny,
00:34 and a very happy destiny.
00:37 I think Indians, we are very intuitive with color.
00:41 I mean, there's no science in this.
00:44 We don't think about whether a color suits our blue eyes,
00:48 or our blonde hair, or, you know, anything at all.
00:54 We just wear it.
00:55 We just throw a whole lot of colors together, and we are done.
00:59 And I really hope that's how it will be,
01:02 because this is really our intuitive intelligence.
01:06 It's the deep-down intelligence of our villages,
01:11 of our spirituality, as it were,
01:14 of not necessarily of Neo-India, which is possibly sophisticated,
01:19 though I'm not saying that our villages are not sophisticated.
01:23 There is a wonderful sophistication in our villages as well.
01:28 And for me, this is what I tap into.
01:31 The sometimes over-decorative aesthetic,
01:38 the simplicity, the hedonism, and above all, the happiness.
01:44 Because I think at every moment of the day,
01:47 in every city, in every country,
01:50 that's really all we need to feel happy.
01:53 And that really has become a much more conscious goal now,
01:59 whether we do it with clothing,
02:01 whether we do it with our philosophy,
02:03 whether we do it with our work, or anything.
02:06 And India has always had color leadership.
02:12 And I'm so happy that more and more people come to India to seek out colors.
02:19 I had no idea that I knew anything more about colors,
02:24 or it worked in any way.
02:26 I just knew that sometimes people told me that colors were a disease for me,
02:31 that what I considered blue was often a green,
02:34 what I thought was red was often a pink.
02:39 And somewhere, I think my antennas were quite clued on to
02:45 keeping the whole feeling of color authentic.
02:49 And somewhere, I managed to make this not only pay my bills,
02:55 but also to create employment,
03:01 to use the help of a wonderful team of Kari Gurs,
03:07 of women, of women empowerment,
03:10 and connect with women of many countries for the same goals.
03:16 And in a world that's ravaged with guns, terrorism,
03:23 often philosophies and politics we don't understand,
03:28 I think happy women make for great economies and for great countries.
03:34 Would you agree?
03:36 (Laughs)
03:38 My father was in the infantry.
03:45 I studied in ten schools,
03:48 which meant pretty much a school a year.
03:52 My mother loved textiles.
03:55 So what you really have in front of you is a combination of the two.
04:00 My nomadic childhood, I was a very timid child.
04:04 There were no malls, there were no markets in the places I grew up.
04:10 They were often little more than villages.
04:13 There were cantonments, there were one-horse towns,
04:16 and I was way too shy and timid to really have friends.
04:20 So my friends were flowers.
04:23 And very quickly, my antennas were sort of drawn to color,
04:31 to form, to beauty that is saturated and intense and full of freshness.
04:37 I still cull from these memories,
04:39 and I use, in my work, yellow undertones
04:43 because for me, it's always more fresh,
04:46 and it traps a bit of the sun,
04:50 which again is energy and happiness.
04:53 I mean, I wasn't conscious of any of this,
04:56 but today when my girls make fun of me for the way I talk to my dyer,
05:00 and how I said, "I said the orange of the sunset,
05:05 not the orange of the sunrise."
05:08 Or you know, colors like that.
05:10 I like to leave it intuitive and instinctive.
05:16 And interestingly, that's how the world seems to be okay with it.
05:24 When I take my work now to international capitals all over the world,
05:30 and the colors are still often black and white and gray,
05:36 and I go with my 100 colors,
05:39 I feel a little bit like a country bumpkin for the first few minutes.
05:45 But then there is this whole emotional resonance of the human hand,
05:50 you know, all the imperfections,
05:53 and perhaps perfection that we pass on,
05:56 with just touch,
05:59 and skills, and craftsmanship that is honed over generations,
06:05 and really kept alive in this country.
06:08 In almost every part of the country, crafts are very alive.
06:13 In Kashmir, Iranian and Persian crafts are perhaps more alive than they are in Iran.
06:19 And it isn't like Kashmir has had it really easy.
06:22 There is a certain resilience,
06:26 a certain, if I may use the word, happiness quotient,
06:31 in our craftspeople, and even our poor.
06:35 I feel the level of angst is so much lower in any Indian slum,
06:40 than in poorer people in other less developed parts of the world.
06:47 Look at the way they decorate their homes, or even a slum.
06:50 I'm not even talking about beautiful Rajasthani villages,
06:54 which of course, blow everyone's mind, right?
06:57 Rajasthani villages, where every 10 kilometers, the turban can change,
07:03 the stripes can change, the leharyas can change,
07:06 and those gorgeous men with their limpid brown eyes, you know how it is.
07:11 So there is a certain chemistry that goes on everywhere,
07:14 and I'd like to draw from that.
07:17 And I think the word really is chemistry.
07:20 I use it for composition.
07:24 I like composition with colors.
07:27 The impact, the emotional impact of one color against the other,
07:31 and what that can do with our emotional buttons.
07:37 And more, like I said, chemistry, perhaps even like kisses.
07:41 And it's the same thing, whether you like it or not,
07:46 each one of us responds differently to color.
07:51 And when I was growing up, there used to be a Lakme ad,
07:54 I don't know if you remember,
07:56 "If color be to beauty," does anyone remember this?
07:59 "If color be to beauty, what music is to mind? Play on."
08:06 So color does bring something very vital and deep to beauty.
08:11 Beauty is also something that we need every single day,
08:16 because beauty brings that moment of perfection, wellness, stillness,
08:23 and harmony into our lives.
08:27 And we need it, we deserve it.
08:31 Women especially, I mean men too, of course,
08:35 but women especially, I think every single woman deserves a rainbow.
08:40 Every single day.
08:43 Because that's exactly what she is.
08:46 She's a rainbow.
08:49 Don't shy away from it.
08:51 Accept the rainbow in yourself.
08:55 Especially if you were lucky enough to be born in this subcontinent like me.
09:05 I have these really exciting trips in Turkey.
09:10 The first time I, not the first time, but the first time I went on work,
09:14 was the same night of the military coup.
09:17 So as I landed in Istanbul, it was the last flight in,
09:22 and the city was flooded with tanks.
09:25 But we continued with our show,
09:28 and the reason was because everyone thought that she's from India,
09:33 so she will have some happiness with her.
09:38 And nobody is going to say no to happiness, right?
09:44 The next time I went, there was an earthquake in Bodrum where I was,
09:51 of 7.8 magnitude.
09:54 But we still did our show,
09:57 and I don't know if the pictures came up,
10:00 and it was still a lot of fun.
10:05 Sometimes I feel,
10:09 you know, that when people see my work, or my home, or my stores,
10:14 I feel that they say, "Oh, how colorful."
10:17 I have two reactions.
10:18 One, I feel that why didn't they, you know,
10:21 maybe there's other stuff also that I do.
10:23 I work very hard on our printing stories,
10:26 on our technique of printing,
10:28 and we've married the Bengal school with more North Indian schools,
10:33 the Bagru and Sanganer,
10:34 and we've devised what is really our own unique style of printing.
10:39 And I would like to think that gets noticed too.
10:43 But I do hear, 90% of the time, I just hear, "What lovely colors."
10:48 And the reason is, of course, the star is our printing technique again,
10:52 which is ancient enough to use live bacteria,
10:55 the sunlight, and sources that are ancient and raw.
11:00 So the colors dazzle.
11:02 And you still need a day of perfect sunlight to make it dazzle.
11:06 You need to bake the textile.
11:09 So, I mean, in many ways, I'm a textile designer.
11:12 But when people see the work, it's still, "Oh my God, the colors."
11:17 So there is a part of me that feels that I wish they would notice more than the color.
11:22 But there's also a part of me that says, that wonders,
11:26 "If I use any color at all yet, I feel it's still the tip of the iceberg."
11:31 And we still have so much left to say,
11:36 so much left to experience in our own culture.
11:43 I mean, if any culture is anybody's, I mean, everything is everybody's.
11:47 It's all the plunder ground of anyone who wants it, who's hungry enough for it.
11:54 And I think that India still, each and every part of India,
12:02 I mean, Rajasthan is an obvious state for color,
12:06 but even if you take the textiles in Nagaland,
12:10 the weave is so tight that the pigmentation is glorious.
12:15 The colors are like, you know, you could never see even a solid color
12:20 because they are woven so beautifully, so exquisitely,
12:25 and it's such a time-taken and time-honored technique
12:28 that the colors would really be, even a white,
12:31 would be the most beautiful white you would see.
12:35 And just this is how it works.
12:38 Every single part of India, the color, depth, intensity
12:44 of not just the textiles, but everything,
12:48 the food, the stories, the basketry, the jewelry,
12:56 the way we are connected with our source, the stories really,
13:03 the people, the smiles, the warmth, the beautiful women,
13:09 the music, the food, it's all color, isn't it?
13:14 So, I really don't have more to say,
13:24 except to say that this has been a really, really exciting journey for me.
13:31 And I really feel that I'm just taking baby steps here.
13:38 And I would so love to do it with all of your support
13:42 because honestly, I never feel alone.
13:45 I mean, the best part of this has been the women who joined me on the journey,
13:49 the women who wear anupama, the women who make anupama,
13:53 the women who make our tassels,
13:55 that is our Women's Empowerment Initiative.
13:59 We have the happiest, most smiling women ever,
14:03 and perhaps the most colorful as well.
14:07 So, thank you so much for having me here with you.
14:11 And for allowing me to share whatever little I know.
14:20 Thank you so much.
14:22 [Music]
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