Kalamkari art is nothing less than a piece of palpable history. It dates back to more than 3000 B.C. According to a few historians, fabric samples depicting Kalamkari art was even found at the excavated archeological sites of Mohenjo-Daro. Kalamkari is an age old Indian craft of hand painting done on cotton or silk fabric with a tamarind pen, using natural dyes. The word Kalamkari is acquired from a Persian word where ‘kalam ‘means pen and ‘Kari’ refers to craftsmanship. This art involves 23 long and continuous steps of dyeing, bleaching, hand painting, block printing, starching, cleaning and more such Nitti gritty. Motifs drawn in Kalamkari are mainly mythological, the divine characters of Hindu epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana leads the designs. But it also ranges from flowers, peacock and paisleys. Overall, this style holds a strong religious connection because it’s originated in the temples. There are two distinctive styles of kalamkari art practiced in India – Srikalahasti style and the Machilipatnam style. The Srikalahasti style of Kalamkari, wherein the “kalam” or pen is used for freehand drawing of the subject and filling in the colors, which is an enormous manual work. It mainly uses vegetable pigments applied onto the fabric with the help of wooden engraved blocks. Till today, many families in Andhra Pradesh continue to practice this art and this has served as the prime source of livelihood for them, over the generations. Kalamkari art primarily use earthy colors like indigo, mustard, rust, black and green in all there paintings. Natural dyes used to paint colors in Kalamkari art is extracted from natural resources like fruits, gums, vegetables, stones etc. with no use of chemicals and artificial matter. Today Andhra Pradesh is the largest producer of Kalamkari, where this rich heritage of Indian art has come a long way and established its magic across the world.