Once upon a time, there lived a man who could sew to perfection. These were times when bales of fabric stared down at you from shop shelves, transforming themselves in your mind’s eye into lovely frocks, smart shirts and swirling skirts, till you saw them in just the form you coveted and called for the sales person. These were times when your imagination was the first step in the consumer cycle involving the acquisition of clothing. You saw, you imagined, you bought. And then you placed a trunk call to Amrutlaal.
He lived off NH 8, in Dungri, at least 10 kilometres from the colony. These were times when distances were not easy to traverse but distances were still not what they seem to be today. There were specific days in the month assigned to his visits, Sundays mostly, and fabric had to be collected in advance of such a visit. This called for a fair bit of planning. There were many homes in need of new threads and Amrutlaal had to visit them all in a span of a few hours. It was an unspoken understanding – it would be easier on everyone if you had a pattern in mind.
These were times when every household had access to a pattern book or two – often two decades old, if not more, but then these were also times when fashion wasn’t the fickle thing it is now. The pattern books were usually hand-me-downs from mothers and grandmothers and sometimes even great-grandmothers. And they were usually very British. They came complete with visual step-by-step instructions that would enable any reasonably adept seamstress to transform a few metres of fabric into a piece of clothing that would make the chubby, rosy-cheeked girl modelling it, glow with pride and happiness. These were times when pictures spoke a thousand words.
The magic in Amrutlaal’s fingers meant this – the pattern you pointed to in the book would not just be replicated to perfection, but the details, down to the hemming, buttonholes, hooks and eyes would be nothing short of fine art. You took these for granted for years, until you switched cities and tailors and realised a pretty eye is not just that – it was also meant to outlast you and that was Amrutlaal’s clever design. These were times when the sturdiness of fabric was something you took for granted. What made clothing worthy of handing down to cousins and sons and granddaughters was the manner in which pieces of it had been sewn together.
You never saw his tools. His cloth bag would contain dresses to be delivered, fabric that had been collected, an oily measuring tape, a well-thumbed notebook and a tiny blunt pencil, sharpened at both ends. These were times when you thought nothing of doing this to pencils. His measurements were precisely taken and re-taken before they were noted down in Gujarati in his notebook. Among the many sensations burned into your memory would be the one of your ankles being jabbed at, two or three times to confirm the exact place where the chudidaar would end.
Those who had the benefit of his services were always more well-put together than the rest. Their school uniforms had the perfect pleats, belt loops and hemlines that never showed the stitching that lay behind. The collars would stand stiff and no button would ever pop at an inopportune moment, requiring a resourceful aunty to bale you out with a safety pin.
He took a bus on Sundays from just outside his little house off NH 8.You knew where he lived because on occasion when you needed something urgently, you didn’t wait for him to make the trip. The family would make an outing out of driving to his house, almost hidden in a thicket of trees, 10 kilometres away. Sometimes when his departure from the colony coincided with a scheduled family outing that side of town, you offered him a ride home. This was very rare though. So rare, you noticed and stored away the knowledge that the simplicity and neatness you saw in Amrutlaal’s work were really his lifestyle – everything about his modest home was neat, trim and well…sewn together so beautifully.
Your mother would make enquiries of his young son, who years later would migrate abroad and do his father proud with a new South Hall address for the family craft. But here and now, your father would wait at the wheel, tapping away at it edgily. But you felt right at home at Amrutlaal’s. His shy wife would offer you water, followed by tea and disappear behind the curtains. He called the shots here as well you saw, just as he did when it came to your hemlines. He was firm in his views on what small alteration to a pattern from the book would work well for your height, weight and other vital statistics. He was an artiste, but his artistry never left you feeling he’d sacrificed a few metres of your hard-earned money at the altar of creativity.
You know what that means now when you walk into a boutique, willingly submit to being bludgeoned into accepting a style that doesn’t work for you, watch your expensive chiffon morph into a Zandra-Rhodeseque disaster and realise you’ve been robbed blind. You know it now when you prefer to scan racks of assembly line styles, for one that is the closest fit, realising you’ve long given up on perfection.
These are times when ‘perfection’, ‘fastidious’, ‘conscientious’ and ‘meticulous’ are merely words. Those were times when they meant Amrutlaal.
Seetal Iyer is the co-founder and content head at Timbre Media and one of the most well-loved radio voices for over 15 years and counting.