Tradition gives way to tech with online sales, celebrations this Aadi

This is also the time people purchase clothes and jewellery for Aadi thallupadi (discount). But this year, owing to the pandemic, things have taken a different turn. Every year, DakshinaChitra conducts its annual aadi perukku and Ayyanar festival with traditional folk performances by TN artistes. “During the Aadi month, we organise a month-long festival where we invite folk artistes to perform. But this time, we will be doing it is a low-key affair at the museum itself – students who regularly learn thappattam and oyilattam from our masters here will be performing. The celebrations will be telecasted live on our social media platforms. This festival is so important to us and everybody is looking forward to it,” says Parvathy GB from DakshinaChitra.

Varun Suresh, the partner of Pothys, says that they have adopted a new method for selling clothing during the pandemic. “We have introduced video calling service through WhatsApp. Customers can call in the numbers mentioned on our website and the salesperson will show the product they are looking for. Once the customer finalise the product, they can either make online payment or pay it when it is delivered at home.” 

Kamala, the Crafts Council of India’s store in Egmore, have digitised all their products and have been sending catalogues to people across the country. Jayasri Samyukta Iyer, Joint Secretary of The Crafts Council of India, tells DT Next, “ Since some people are worried to visit the shop during this period, we decided to go digital. We have digitised our collection and started sharing and selling the products via WhatsApp. We are selling textiles, cushion covers, sarees, craft products and so on. We also wanted our customers to shop comfortably sitting at their homes. Every week, we focus on different collections and share catalogues accordingly. We also want the artisans and weavers to benefit from the sale.”