In winters Sheikh Haseena and her husband used to come down from the snowing valley of Kashmir to Punjab and spend most of their time in Bathinda selling Kashmiri clothing and other textiles from a rented shop that was just concrete laden walls. While I was fascinated by their cherry red cheeks and their sweet dialect, I always was curious about what hardships these people might have to go through to sustain their livelihood and craft. In 2009, my craft documentation on Paithani sarees took me to Paithan and Yeola villages in Maharashtra and satiated my inquisitiveness about the life of artisans in their native place. I then understood that it is due to lack of design knowledge and market connect that these artisans are devoid of work or exploited.

But what goes around to sustain such a capitalistic pattern in the cottage industry is something I got an answer to in my education at the Young India Fellowship. Before the Fellowship, the four years of work experience gave me a good insight into international boutique design studios and domestic high street retail. These learnings over the years conceived the idea to start a new brand Sedhantik to try and overcome the shortcomings that had caught my notice until 2016. With Sedhantik, each experience has opened new information to set higher goals with regard for our culture, people and environment. Even now, each day, each project, each workshop has been adding to my individual learning experience.