Since I do not come from a design background, I rely on my instincts, my locally gathered knowledge and my team. My design consultant is a hearing impaired and non-verbal 18 year old who has an excellent eye for detail. He has helped me incorporate different design techniques on a single piece of fabric. With 2 skilled artisans, I started the Jaipur unit and slowly took in 4 more unskilled team members. While we were training the unskilled workers, more turned up on our door for work and training. Due to my limited resources at that time, I tied up with units around Jaipur to provide permanent work to the trained workforce. It gave me immense satisfaction that’s hard to explain in words but I continued training people – took 2 trainees for 6 months on the job training. It has been a huge highlight in my journey to know that I have helped 36 women get permanent work in various printing units. A lot of women also got expertise in craft work and two of them went on to receive their ITI certification in stitching!
Around mid 2014, while being an employee at an American firm, I was on a trekking break and at maximum peace with myself in the mountains. It hit me. I am almost 10,000 days down from the 30,000 days given to an average human life as a time bank. The corporate job fills many parts in one’s life apart from the main one – purpose and peace. After careful and cautious planning – I took the plunge of quitting it. While leading treks for many organisations in 2016, I learnt the art of weaving in Manali. It took me 6 months to understand it fully and the process gave birth to a small unit in Manali employing 3 single mothers. Today in mid 2021, we have 9 women weaving everything – local and traditional.
Came across this beautiful word – Ruhaniiyat. The deeper I delved into the meaning, the more sense it made for me. It was more like the word found me. What I have been searching for, came to me as a word. My brand had to be something related to the soul – the realisation of having this soul – this soul that wants to contribute in its small way.
Hence – Ruhaniiyat was named.
Coming from an unrelated background, it has sort of helped me go beyond the obvious. As I said, Ruhaniiyat is fulfilment from the soul, I do whatever that satisfies my soul. I travelled to various states, connected with weavers and artisans and directly sourced their fabric. I loved and excelled at geometry in school so it naturally got included in my designs as geometrical prints. My whole sole inspiration remains the local women who wear a medley of colours, prints and designs. There are no rules with them and that inspires me a lot.
I quit following the mundane and playing by the rules. And women have a huge role to play in my thinking! They work through the day, help the house run, step out, carry stuff and sometimes with kids – they are inherently beautiful. Why should the clothes not accommodate the curvaceous bodies that love to live life to the fullest! Why should grey haired beauties not carry the boldest reds? Why should the perfect abs not rock the quintessential saree-blouse that’s so Indian. I use myself or my friends for shoots for precisely this reason. We are imperfectly perfect and that’s what my brand will continue working on.
