India Multiculti - Gujarat and Diu Island

Ahmedabad is India’s textile megacity, hemmed in by the flood plains of the north and the pearls and spices of the south. It is pepper hot, and claustrophobic.

Centuries of trade have been brought to a head in a late-industrial stalemate that has yet to greet the green thinking of post-industrial commerce. Diesel stains mark the cotton collars of rickshaw drivers as an ugly smudge, in sharp contrast to their bright hennaed hair, and their carts that are a collective riot of colour. In the factories and workshops, henna-stained hands brocade, mosaic and embroider miles of fabric for export.

Some of the textiles are bought in from the nearby Rann of Kutch. It is India’s best embroidery, so detailed that it leaves many desert women workers almost blind, so that they progressively sew crazier patchwork. Inevitably, and horribly, populations will be broken on the wheels of commerce, the body turned from shrine to commodity. In India, fate and free will wrestle on every street corner.

John Callahan, Emi Cataldi, Erwan Simon and I meet up with Baybay Niu from Taiwan and Valentina D’Azzeo from Italy, and take some hair-raising rickshaw rides through the tight-knit traffic. The city’s pattern is clear. Cut by the river Sabarmati, the old, eastern side is a melee of Muslim and Hindu architecture. In the industrial west, trades have established themselves in blocks: vast and eerie charcoal yards, sari stalls, and sweatshops busy producing bagru (patterned cotton), shisha (mirror work) and appliqué.