I’m wearing a Balochi dress after a very long time. So, I thought.. why not a post on Balochi dresses (pashk)? By the way, my fascination with dresses is limited to pashks only. This is so because, for me, each pashk is a piece of art that speaks of the designer’s skill. Many times I feel my graphic/web design skills are inherited.Almost every woman of my family can do Balochi embroidery. Let me draw the similarities. Choosing a background color/pattern for the website is the same as choosing a cloth to make a pashk. The choice of the color scheme (color of headers, text, links, etc) is very much like choosing the color of the threads to work with. Bad color schemes lead to bad designs. Designing websites, however, is a lot easier than designing pashks. A pashk can take several years to complete!

I’m not really a true artist in the family then, eh?

There are several types of doch (balochi embroidery done on pashk). There’s Kapnaal doch, Rind doch, Banor-e-Ans (Bride’s Tear), Gul -e- Kantuk, Badshah-e-Taj (King’s Crown), Taidok, Pazep, Neza, Chandan-e-Haar, Gul-e-Nimash, et al.

I’ve seen children under the age of ten doing doch. They go to schools as well. Most children lend their mothers a helping hand in the preparation of their new Eid pashks. What pleases me is that the art will stay alive for a very long time to come, insha Allah. The disappointing fact is that I don’t know how to do Balochi doch. A cousin once taught me how to work with mirrors, but I don’t remember the lesson anymore. Lack of practice. I guess I’m better off designing websites.