My father and I ran a restaurant: Satya Paul

Satya Paul generally doesn’t give interviews. Instead, it’s the designers from his House who speak on his behalf most of the time.

However, DNA decided to settle for no less and when this reclusive designer finally decided to speak to us, the first thing we asked him was, Why does he run away from the media all the time?

He says, “There is currently an atmosphere of wanting to be a celebrity more than standing for the work that one does. I would like the work to speak for what I do. I don’t belong to the cult of a celebrity.”

It doesn’t take long for the designer to reminisce about his troubled graduation from being a restaurant errand boy to one of the most successful designers in India.

“It was a spontaneous journey than a pre-planned one. My family was uprooted from Pakistan and landed in India with nothing in hand. From a zero start, my father and I ran a restaurant in Sarojni Nagar (Delhi), which became quite famous at that time. The struggle was intense. From that I decided to enter the textile business as I thought it would be less taxing, though one was to see equally challenging times ahead. The store  (in Delhi) was the one that I started in 1965. It stored everything from men’s and women’s garments to home furnishings. It was needed to develop the market,” he says. And then comes a startling revelation — Satya Paul never learned designing from anybody; he was self-taught.

“I had to self-teach myself about design and quality as I was not content only with trading. Wanting to offer better quality and design, the search took me far and wide and helped shape a life of creation. Later, I started exports and then the first ‘boutique’ store for sarees. My label was born in 1985,” he says.

Contrary to popular belief, the designer still has not given up work. “Design is like a river for me, it is continuously on. My work is worship for me. Anything one is immersed in is equally satisfying. The problem is doing things half-heartedly. This applies to anything that one does in life,” he ends.