PUPUL Jayakar, 81, passed away quietly in her sleep on March 28. Had it been daylight and she up and about, death wouldnt have dared creep up on her. Indias official cultural Czarina was like that. Whether it was a game of poker at Mumbais Willingdon Club or a discussion on the overpowering influence of the West, she never let anything or anyone get the better of her.
That she had "an eye that could see, a ear that could hear" and a "sense for what is common and what is uncommon" only accentuated her already formidable strengths. Born on September 11, 1915, to a liberal-thinking father who was in the civil service and a Gujarati Brahmin mother, Pupul inherited the best of both worlds. Her subsequent education at Annie Besants school in Varanasi served to enhance her sensitivity to a timeless tradition and the flux of a nation in ferment. Soon she took to wearing sarees, opting for breeches only while riding.
Childhood association with the Nehru family stood her in good stead, continued through Indira Gandhis bleak 1977-80 phase right through to the end. Once Jawaharlal Nehru offered her the opportunity to pioneer the hand-loom industry, there was no looking back. She was chairperson of the Handicraft and Handloom Exports Corporation of India from 1968 to 1977. Over the years she was chairperson of the All-India Handicrafts Board, the Central Cottage Industries Corporation, the governing body of the National Institute of Design and the Calico Museum of Textiles. She also served as president of the Krishnamurthi Foundation of India and as handloom and handicrafts advisor to the government.
However, the personal life of the recipient of the Padma Bhushan (1967) and the Watamull award had its fair share of punctuations, though it had no place for a full stop. Not when she married in 1937, cutting short a potential journalistic career. Not when she lost two subsequent babies after her first-born Radhika. Not even when she went temporarily blind. As her outer life turned into a tsunami, she threw herself into the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurthi, going as far as to introduce the philosopher to close friend Indira Gandhi. And even as she went about rediscovering the Madhubani paintings, she wrote voraciouslyshort stories, articles and books, including a biography of Indira Gandhi and four volumes on Indias varied artistic heritage. When she died, she had been working on her memoirs.
In the preface to the Earthen Dream, an introduction to the ritual arts of rural India, she writes: "Everywhere we turn, we see the whisper of the new technologies culturebullock carts with rubber tubes, mass produced Krishna sculptures in painted plaster sold at village fairs." This tearing-off of the self from nature hurt her considerably. In fact, her uncanny knack of spotting the best of tradition and individual talent took Indias artistic image several notches up the international social ladder, starting with bleeding madras, checked, vegetable dyed cotton. She convinced Pierre Cardin to experiment with Indian handlooms and had Jacqueline Kennedy patronising her boutique Sona in New York.
Back home too, the craze for chiffon and georgette fell through the cracks of the synthetic textile industry and paved the way for ethnic saris. When Indian was in, Pupul was never far behind. Her awareness of western tastes found full bloom in the success of the handpicked Indian artists at the Festivals of India in London, France and America. True, she faced flak initially for the festivals and for closeting herself with her coterie, but she brushed it off saying she preferred working with small effective groups instead of lumbering institutions. "She was deeply sincere in her pursuit of knowledge, not only in the visual art of textile designing, but also in music and literature. She succeeded in changing perceptions of India abroad at a profound level," says Tas-neem Mehta, convenor of INTACHs Mumbai chapter. Sadly, shes left no heir.
Filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who worked with her during one of the Festivals of India, remembers her as "an extremely intellectual and extraordinary person who almost singlehandedly turned the face of the handloom sector". She even carried her passion home. As the story goes, an American designer politely inquired of Pupul: "Do you ever wear anything of less than museum quality?" In life, as in death, everything she touched was done in the best possible manner.
The last days were spent with her two sisters reliving and regaling themselves with tales of the past, though three days prior to her demise she was admitted to the Cumballa Hill Hospital. At their sprawling heritage bungalow in south Mumbai, grieving daughter Radhika Hertzberger reminisces: "She was an independent woman who loved beauty, loved art, loved peace." After a lifetime of assorted activity, Pupul Jayakar has finally found it.
