The Kumbaya Story

It has been over twenty-six years since the day women from Neemkheda village came to our house and saw patchwork cushions made out of old clothes. From the colourful pieces sewn together they picked out the shirts and kurtas we used to wear. The next day, building an earthen dam in the scorching sun with head loads of clay, they said they wanted to learn how to stitch on the sewing machine.​

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And so we started Kumbaya with three borrowed sewing machines, a box full of scrap and a book on quilting techniques left behind by a friend.

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Looking back, these years have been about creating the business of manufacturing from scratch, in the middle of nowhere. For women whose hands would be burnt from carrying hot iron tagaris or mudpans, whose bare feet would be cracked walking on earth baked by the piercing rays of the sun under the Tropic of Cancer. The idea of Kumbaya was born here, from them, on this dry landscape. Born from the rippling strength of their tattooed arms, the flamboyant prints on their swinging clothes, the glint of silver on their ankles; from laughing women dead serious about stitching.