TALKING THREADS

Cluny Embrodery Centre, Pondicherry

The women are silent, hard at work, at Cluny Embroidery Centre, located inside a well maintained 18th century bungalow at Romain Rolland Street in Pondicherry. The needlework experts here are underprivileged women who work under the watchful eyes of the sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny. The bungalow itself can serve as a design inspiration, with its 12-feet high doors, polished wooden

closets and chests. Designs here are created on request, and the smallest piece (a kerchief ) costs as much as `500, but the sisters insist that people who realise the true value of handwork will always come back.