Serving Good

I picked up the local newspaper in my hotel room in Delhi when I was there a few months ago and noticed a familiar face as I was flipping through the pages. It was someone I knew in high-school - the smile was the same just on a face that had lived more life since then. D was featured in an interview about saving the artisans who weave silk and cotton sarees in her home state of Maharashtra. She had started a boutique from inside her flat decades ago and now it was a well-known brand, doing great work. D gave her husband a lot of credit for making her dream come true and putting her on the map, could have never done it without him. 

Reading the interview brought to mind scenes from our teens. D was among the most fashionable people in our class. She knew a lot on international cosmetic brands at a time when it was a novelty back home - these brands were not commonly available at stores but she had several relatives who lived abroad and provided access. That might have been the "foreign-made" phase of her life. It gave her a sense of exclusivity in our small town where the average teen had a pretty limited world view. Very few had seen much of India never mind any other country.

We parted ways when we graduated and left to college. I don't think I ever saw or heard from her after that. Her bio in the interview suggested she had worked for a couple of years after college as a flight attendant (which made perfect sense for D), then after marriage she was able to focus on her project to protect traditional Indian weavers. Since I don't have a sense of D's evolution as a person after she became an adult, to me this felt like the flicking of a light-switch in her mind. 

One minute it was all about wanting things that came from afar to really diving into sarees woven by hand in the Indian hinterland. I was glad to see her channel her energy into such good cause. Needless to say D looked like a million bucks in her Sambalpuri cotton saree paired with beautiful silver jewelry. She'd still count as the most fashionable person I know. Some things don't change.