03-07-2025
An exhibition to celebrate ‘risha' a breast cloth that tells stories of Tripura's tribal women
At the panel discussion held as part of the ongoing textile exhibition, Revisiting The Risha: The Identity of Self and Community, hosted by The Registry of Sarees (TRS) in Bengaluru, designer Aratrik Dev Varman had a packed house listening to him in rapt attention.
Dev Varman, the founder of Ahmedabad-based fashion label Tilla, was narrating a mythical story on the origins of the risha, a narrow, unstitched textile worn traditionally as a breast cloth, by women from Tripura's indigenous tribes. The story, featuring a king and a divine snake as its main characteristics may not have had a customarily happy ending, but it served as a memorable introduction to the audience who were, in all likelihood, seeing these textiles for the first time.
Curated by TRS' Aayushi Jain, the ongoing exhibition features 24 cotton rishas from Dev Varman's personal collection, and is an offshoot of a six-year-long study done by him and designer and collaborator Jisha Unnikrishnan, titled The Risha: History In A Narrow Weave.
The rishas on display are over 50 years old and woven in cotton yarn, a rarity today. Look closely at each piece and you'll observe variations in their width—some are broader, some narrower, with different colours and motifs. Each tribe, as Dev Varman shared during the discussion, had their own weaving techniques.
As yet another brilliant example of India's tradition of unstitched draped weaves, what perhaps makes a risha (a word derived from the native Kokborok language) unique is that it was traditionally woven by women, on backstrap looms, for their own use. And both the royals and commoners practised it. 'Backstrap weaving is a very strenuous activity," Unnikrishnan says, adding that today, rishas are woven using acrylic or lurex yarn on frame looms for commercial purposes, and vary vastly in terms of their quality, colours and texture. And unlike the past, where they were worn by the women daily along with a longer, wraparound drape called the rignai, today, the function of the risha itself has changed.
'It's used to felicitate someone, men wear it as a turban and women wear it, during ceremonial occasions, over their T-shirts or blouses," explains Unnikrishnan.
Ask him what got them started on this extensive study that spanned from 2018 to 2024 with a brief pause during the pandemic, and Dev Varman attributes it to the chance discovery of two sets of photo albums seven years ago.
'One set documented village life in Tripura from 1970 to 1980. The other was a collection of royal photographs taken between 1862 and 1896 by Raja Bir Chandra Manikya. The photos showed us that the risha used to be woven by the women who wore it," says Dev Varman.
The discovery compelled Dev Varman and Unnikrishnan, who were busy with a British Council project at the time, to look for answers as to why the traditional risha had quietly disappeared from popular culture from the 1980s onwards.
'The photos led us to research the social history of Tripura via this narrow piece of cloth," says Dev Varman, adding that while historical events are diligently recorded, very rarely does the disappearance of a garment garner similar attention.
But probing that disappearance, he says, 'is another way to explore a region's history." Studying the risha, he says, 'became another way for us to understand contexts like the conflict between Tripura's tribes and Bengalis or the influence of Rabindranath Tagore on the royal court."
The study received editorial and research guidance from the team of Indian art magazine Marg, which also published it last year. But that's not the end of this story. Tilla now works with a small team of women weavers from the villages of Gamchakobra and Lefunga in west Tripura.
There are now plans to make new designs out of the woven fabric. 'For this year's winter collection, we've already started ordering fabrics which will be stitched together to make jackets," says Dev Varman.
Revisiting The Risha: The Identity of Self and Community is on at The Registry of Sarees, Krishna Reddy Layout, Domlur, Bengaluru, till 13 July, 10.30am to 5.30pm (closed on Mondays).
