New Delhi, July 3 -- 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 textil...