| November 14 , 2004
Namaste! Patti and I had a great evening with Nutan and her friend last night. Getting together with them was like visiting with old friends-they are so laid back and friendly. Its great to hear about nutan’s business-she’s an amazing designer and has a great ideas. She spent some time in the US so she is also really familiar with the US market which will be a huge help to us. What’s exciting about her products is that she incorporates a blend of many of the different craft styles around india into her own design-her clothing has beautiful embroidery and detail work. The other aspect which is exciting to me is that the capacity building side of her business is relatively new-she is trying to figure out how to provide steady income for the women she works with, to help them with the problems they face at home and to provide training for them in new ways. We invited her to come to creative with us on tuesday to learn from their model of cooperation. Right now she is one woman handling so much of the administration-it will be an amazing process to work with her as she grows-to take ideas from creative and develop from there. She is also interested in meeting with deepak’s mother who is an amazing seamstress and makes beautiful wedding saris and wedding dresses-perhaps they can share ideas and even work together also!
its another hot day! we just try to stay in the shade as much as possible-this afternoon we’ll work more on choosing the products we’ll bring back and then finalize it with creative tomorrow-we’ll also share ideas with them about some new product ideas for future lines. On wednesday we’ll head to ganesh puri-the site of the ashram from where Patti’s Guru’s lineage is from-this time we’ll go by car-as opposed to the long bus rides our last trip in january-supposedly ganesh puri is on the water so I look forward to getting my feet wet and maybe even going for a swim. Then on thursday night we’ll go to the theater with nutan and her friend -there’s a theater festival going in bombay now-supposedly the theater is an old historic one.
I hope all is well there-we are getting really excited about coming back to tell more about nutan and creative’s story and share their products-I have learned so much on this trip and I’m excited about this path that we are one together!
love, Beth
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