Hand in hand

By joining hands, a group of women in Bengaluru is helping local artisans, farmers and producers achieve better margins and reach a wider audience

When Mala Dhawan was growing up as an Indian Air Force kid, she couldn’t help but notice how everything had to be done with one’s own hands. When needed, her father, a fighter pilot who retired as wing commander, did the carpentry work, her mother embroidered and sewed, and everyone around her knitted, cooked, baked or did the gardening. The locals, no matter which part of the country her father was posted in, produced all kinds of marvellous stuff — again, made by hand.

It’s only when she grew up did she realise how little value people placed on handmade goods. “So much of what they did was simply taken for granted,” says Dhawan.

This always rankled her. As an advertising professional who had worked with agencies like Ogilvy and Lintas for most of her career, Dhawan had seen for herself what branding and packaging could do to the value of a product.

In 2008-09, Dhawan settled in Bengaluru, and over two years, she and her sister helped organise a few bazaars mostly in their garden at home. The idea was to try and help

At the annual event of Handmade Collective, a society that promotes handcrafted products from artisans across the country