When P. and I lived in Jaipur I got to know a remarkable family of traditional hand block printers in a desert scrub village beyond the city limits. If Rajasthan was a dry-heat Narnia, the printing village was my magic wardrobe, the threshold into a different world.

The visual feast of the place is vivid, but it is the sound of the place that’s especially lasting: the still air was filled with the rhythmic beat of men slapping cotton against the cool water tanks and the double-thump of printers pounding their wooden blocks. Old-timers stirred boiling vats of indigo dye with long poles like dhoti-clad gondoliers, masters of their craft, masters, it seemed, of the universe. Hindu women chirruped and chattered as they spread yards of sari fabric across the public square (a sweeping plot of scored earth) for the punishing Rajasthani sun to fix the natural dyes. I remember humming, singing, the sound of women shooing cows off the drying textiles. Punjabi pop songs drifting tinnily from someone’s workshop radio. Laughter.

Save for the gut-shuddering, soul-deadening, pride-shattering diarrhea I always got after those cherished visits (sorry to break the magic spell!), my days with the printers were hands-down the highlight of India Thymez.

Well one year later my sister Hopie is in Jaipur, picking up where I left off.

In my best Ira Glass voice: Stay. With us.

All photos © Lily Stockman / bigBANG studio. Please credit moi if you repost. Spanx!

(Source: bigbangstudio.blogspot.co.uk)