I am home for almost 2 months this time and have time to visit places I always wanted to visit, like the Loktak Lake, Sendra, Keibullamjao National Park (the natural inhabitant of Sangai) and also rediscover Imphal city on foot and this happened last week when a fren of mine (V) who's a accessories designer from Kolkata had come to source traditional shawls and other textiles from Imphal, V makes lovely bags and other accessories from Naga shawls. Earlier she did some sourcing from Nagaland Emporium but seems they could not supply the quantity she required, I suggested that she shd come to Imphal and see the Ima Keithel.
V bought a lot of shawls and Phanek (Tradtional Wrap-a-round), with her I explored the market n had never explored the New Ima keithel in that way....interacting with weavers and sellers and trying to understand how the whole market functions was the most interesting part to me. I took pictures and met some interesting woman sellers who can sell Ice to an Eskimo. We also visited some wholesale dealers in the market who's main function is to supply yarn n give advance cash to artisans, the handloom sector in Manipur is highly disorganised in an organised manner.
My fren "V" must have bought 50 items all together and m looking fwd for all of them to be turned into a different utility products.
