This is Our Destiny

9 Year-old Dinesh, watched his father sitting hunched back on the floor, painstakingly creating embroidery, with intricate patterns, using threads of several hues.

- Nayan Marphatia

His father would peer into the cloth with great concentration, before his nimble fingers pierced the cloth, using the needle with surgical precision. Dinesh often wondered whether his father’s hunch was due to a bad back or a declining eyesight that forced him to bend and peer into the cloth. The output was an exquisite embroidery, with colorful designs, and small mirrors, stuck at regular intervals, used as bed sheets, pillow cases, and handbags. He was curious as to why his father made them, when they did not own pillows, a bed, or even handbag. The bag used to buy groceries from the village shop, was a crudely stitched bag from old and torn pieces of cloth.

Dinesh was small, underweight and resembled a 7year-old, with a large head and dark-green curious eyes. They were members of the Rabari Community, that inhabited a sleepy village in the harsh and barren desert of Kutch, Gujarat. Everyone in the village bore weather-beaten faces, etched with deep strong lines and folds of dark brown skin, which strangely lent character to their faces. Most men sported a large handle-bar moustache, which was a fashion amongst the men and a sign of virility. Primarily a nomadic community, Dinesh’s father did embroidery to supplement the meagre family income. His mother did the basic household tasks of collecting wood, cooking the meals, and drawing water from the well, which would become almost dry by summer.