Subroto Bhowmick

It was Giraben who sent the young designer Subrata Bhowmick to the National Institute of Design to experiment, to learn and to grow. An interesting byproduct of this was his learning to ride a cycle which in those days cast exactly ‘four naya paisa’ rental per day. The kerosene run light bulb on the cycle was much more expensive to rent than the cycle itself, but that piece of equipment was compulsory to use as an accessory in those seemingly more traffic conscious days.

Gautam Sarabhai along with Giraben ran both the textile mill with its various departments situated as far away as Bapunagar to the Nation Design Institute. Gautambhai Sarabhai was quite adamant in the fact that no one should work after six in the evening. Subrata Bhowmick, in spite of numerous arguments was workohically different. His typical day began in the wee hours of morning, imbibing the machine made art of printed textiles at the mill, then onwards across the bridge to the Design Insitute. Experiments at play, exposed brick walls sculpted around the greens of trees, polished pebbles underfoot, glass, leather, chrome and proverbial rubber plant, inter-connected, multidisciplinary NID.

And then before one knew it, numerous cup of tea and a variety of discussions later, it was already evening and time to return back to the klaxon call of the Calico Mill to work on till late. With due apologies to the Beatles, ‘so little time and so much to do’.

It was the textile industry that ran and defined the city of Ahmedabad, the trade and commerce of this city was inextricably woven within the fabric of this tapestry of mills. Its skyline dotted by an array of brick chimneys, individually embellished with design motifs to give them their distinctive identity. The musical notations of sirens, a familiar sound by which the circle of time was measured. Hand block printed fabric using natural dyes, drying on the river bank with industrial structures mass producing printed textiles looming over them, each complementing the other in the aura generated by their own space. The Calico mill compound and the National Institute of Design spilt across the banks of the flowing Sabarmati, it waters seeped in the woven living history. Delicate machinery resembling human fingers creating floral, geometric patterns on flowingly undulating fabric while elsewhere a master craftsman using hand carved blocks explores the bounty of nature on a textile canvas. In this city of connected contrasts, both are urban art forms, having utility, value and above all beauty. It was industrial wealth which nurtured the traditional craft and they in turn served as repositories of creative knowledge, a symbolic intertwining thread of a unique cultural heritage, a living testimony of an industrial revolution celebrating the cultural traditions mirrored in architectural hegemony of the warp and weft of the city. Rabindra Sangeet. Sunday mornings were reserved for Prakash Cinema where Bengali films were screened and the rest of the day was spent on exploring, sketching and learning the intricate maze of the multi-culturally cohesive city.

Cycling through the sinewy lanes of the old city, catch a screening of ‘Cat Ballou’ at the English Theatre, topped off with an evening spent eating at the Manek Chowk was the proverbial icing on the cake.

These are some of the nostalgic meanderings of Subrata Bhowmick as he leans back at the settee at his Bhowmically Mondrianisque-Miro home interior, the walls punctuated with tapestries of his own creation, complementally showing space with traditional urban folk formulations.
Published: Ahmedabad Mirror