Spinning yards of poetry

Between the weaves

Mohit Kataria and Anu first met while they were still in school in their hometown in Rajasthan, Hanumangarh. However, they only got talking three years later, after which they soon fell in love.

“We fell in love for very specific reasons, apart from adolescent attraction, of course — my poetry and her painting,” says Mohit. Their conversations over STD calls — they lived in separate cities for a while — mostly revolved around these two topics.

The couple decided then, much before they tied the knot in 2008, that they would work with each other too. That’s how what became Jugniz, an apparel brand with hand-painted motifs and accompanying lines of Hindi poetry, was conceptualised.

“I’ve written poetry since I was in class 9,” says Mohit, who also juggles a day job with an IT firm. “When we first met, Anu dreamt of becoming a doctor but she went on to study fashion designing soon afterwards.”

So they come up with ideas, and over the next few days, the husband pens the words and the wife creates a motif and crafts the product. “We started off in a small way the year we got married,” he says. But back then, they created furnishings for kids. “We were based in Delhi then and, somehow, it didn’t click.”

In a couple of years, Mohit got a job as a product manager in an IT firm that required the couple to move to Bengaluru. “Then she got pregnant and we took a three-year break, after which we decided to try out our idea for apparels instead of furnishings,” he offers. “We formalised Jugniz in 2013.”

The clothes are intended for the independent woman of today, he adds, as the name indicates. “Jugni is a popular Punjabi character who’s referenced in many songs,” explains Mohit who has Punjabi roots. “She travels everywhere and expresses herself through poetry. She is free-spirited as we believe our customers to be.”

Are all their outfits for women? “Mostly, yes. We have done a few painted t-shirts for men though and sometimes we do wall panels,” he replies.

With Mohit working and Anu single-handedly managing the artistic side of the business, the focus can’t be on numbers. “We never make more than three of one design — and those are for stoles. As for saris and kurtas, it’s just one handmade piece,” he says. And they mostly sell through the Jugniz website, Facebook page and exhibitions, the most recent being A Hundred Hands’ Handmade Collective. “The theme for that was ‘collaboration’, with various members of the collective creating products by working with each other,” he says. So a white hand-painted kurta at their stall sported a kite with the words “aasman ka saanjha / patang aur maanjha”.

“Unless they work together, neither the kite nor the thread can reach the skies,” explains the poet.

Ask him if he wants to take up writing full time, and he gushes, “I do. I love it. But I also love doing what I do for my IT job. I’m sure if I quit, I will really miss it. So it’s a tough call.”

Nevertheless, writing is something he can’t stop. “When I ask Anu what would happen if I did stop, and she says she’ll divorce me,” he says, laughing. Mirth aside, he explains that working together, they have discovered a lot about each other. “And it’s really important to us that we are both creative people.”