In July 2018, textile design students Arjunvir Singh and Rashi Sharma wanted to spend their college fieldwork documenting Suzani embroidery in Kashmir. Their faculty at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, rejected the proposal. 

The brief required a craft from their home states, so the two settled on Khes, a Punjabi textile they considered too ordinary to count as a craft worth studying. That reluctant choice became the most significant work of their academic lives.

A textile too common to be noticed

Khes is a handwoven cotton fabric from undivided Punjab, used as a bedcover, shawl, and light blanket, and woven with yarn coarser than that used for dhurries but finer than khaddar. It also formed a key part of a bride's trousseau. 

While researching it, Arjunvir and Rashi encountered an unfamiliar term: Majnu Khes, woven in a compound double-cloth structure they had never seen produced on a Punjabi pit loom without a jacquard machine.

Curious, they set out to track it down across Jalandhar, Nakodar, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Patiala, Ludhiana, and Panipat. No one, not even practising weavers, had heard the name.

Found in a trunk at home

The search ended at Arjunvir's own house in Jalandhar. His mother retrieved a fabric from an old trunk, one........

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