If you walk along the main road of Ecroignard, you cannot miss the tailor’s shop of Atma Appadoo. It’s like hundreds of tailors’ shops around the country but still there is an attractiveness peculiar as obtained from disciplined, well-organized businesses showing what they really claim they are selling.

Then, I realized I am in Ecroignard, a village reputed for its annual pilgrimage to the Holy Lake of Grand-Bassin in a special way. This is from where young pilgrims, among others, walk in a beeline, carry kanwars fit for their shoulders, a paragon of discipline and open for emulation.

It’s the village spirit. Atma’s shop is simple, no glossy glass panes or striking smiles on calendars. The luxury lies in Atma’s and his wife’s natural and unassuming smile to the visitor. The smile that many rural people possess. They are life partners and business partners as well. It’s a mutually supporting enterprise based on an agreed distribution of tasks to start, for example, a gown, from measurement to trial and from trial to finish. The sound of radio music is surprisingly low for a ‘commerce’, the customers and the public do not have to be persuaded as they know the shop to go to is this one. The sound of Mrs Atma’s machine alternates in seconds as imposed by the length of sowing she has to make on different parts of the dress: the waist, the length from waist to knee or below knee or from waist to neck, the neck itself and the shoulders. True, this is every dressmaker’s job. Each dress maker has their own finger softness though, pressing on the material and pushing it under the needle on the white chalk mark; a slight movement left or right could entail loss of resources, time, material, own manpower and obligations of corrections. Which would be bad publicity. This is a luxury they assure me they cannot afford.

But there was a beginning, a ‘before’ this silent and successful story began. Atma’s own pater was a tailor as would be a very rare pearl to-day. The one who can make your ‘costume complet, pantalon, veste ek gilet’. Atma is more at ease with making dresses for the ladies, very young, young and less young. In fact, says he, the tastes aren’t so different as elegance cuts across all generations and today, ladies are attuned to what advertises in the latest media posts on the instant.

Atma could have been an educator in dress making techniques like many autodidacts who have the feel and fibre of the love to share their knowledge. With a Sixth Standard, the highest academic level achieved, Atma is a no-mistake man. Perfection is at its best in this small workshop out of which goes finished items which will be seen in Mauritius and around the world.

Quite often, I wonder whether the ‘Recognition of Prior Learning’ techniques could be applied to such formidable ‘artists more than they are artisans’ to ‘grade’ them and ensure further training for an even higher degree of quality. In the meantime, the customers’ fidelity is a testimony of fantastic human relations, get in with a smile and leave to come back with a smile.

The peaceful life of the village of Ecroignard will be punctuated by sequences of development as elsewhere, but they will preserve their culture of discipline, respect and civism. In this world, Atma’s workshop will remain a silent but well-established player.