Last Days In India June 7-10

Today is our last day in India and I must say, although it has been great here, I am ready to get out of the 110 Degree weather. The last couple of days in Bhuj were really nice and they went by quite quickly. We found Shrujan, AA Wazir and the silver stores!
When our hotel manager heard that we were interested in Shrujan and Kala Raksha, he recommended that we speak with one of his good friends, A. A. Wazir. If we would have know how much trouble this could possibly get us into, we might not have headed out on the journey. But, being unsure of who Mr. A. A. Wazir was and what information he might hold, we set off.
Mr. Wazir told us the area where we could find his house, although locating it was not an easy task considering there were five thousand other houses that could be found given the same directions. Fate, luck, or whatever you want to call it was on our side because not halfway through the mess of houses we saw a man who, I guess, saw us and this just happened to be Mr. Wazir’s son. He invited us in and we met the Wazirs, the collectors (and sellers) of museum quality textiles.
The house was full of old, antique textiles, Mr. Wazir and his sons were very knowledgeable about where each piece came from, who it was made by, and how long ago it was made, pretty amazing! First mentioning that some of the textiles were for sale and some were part of his collection, we started looking at textiles and listening to Mr. Wazir for a couple of hours. After several textiles were discussed and laid out for us to look at he told us that his son was going to start putting them away, but we could buy any that we liked. Of course we spent some money, so much that a walk to the ATM was necessary and an invitation for lunch the next day extended.
We went to lunch and saw some of the real treasures in his collection. Mr. Wazir’s collection is incredibly beautiful; I have never seen anything quite like it. I would recommend a visit to A. A. Wazir to anyone in the area of Bhuj and if you are really into embroidery a visit is a must.
We also made a trip out to Shrujan, coming unannounced I think we surprised the employees, but it was here I learned that if you sit around long enough you just might get what you want. We started by looking around the store, then Stacey explained who we were and asked if there was anyone we could speak with. There were two possibilities the Wholesale Sales Manager, who was in Mumbai and the Retail Sales Manager who would be back in an hour. So, we waited….The Retail Sales Manager got in and confirmed that it was the Wholesales Manager who we needed to speak with and that he was out of town, but still only a phone call away. Next thing we knew, Stacey was speaking with him on the phone, but he was in a meeting (?) and would call Stacey back in 15 minutes, so the waiting started again.
Now all this might have run a little smoother if we spoke a little Hindi, but we don’t so we were all confused and we waited. The call came in and it was decided that it would make more sense to send him our questions over email, but that he was happy to answer. What happened next was, in a sense, just what we were waiting for. Two business students doing an internship with Shrujan walked into the room. It was perfect, they were able to speak English, answer several of the questions we had, and give us a tour of the building. On our tour we met the founder of Shrujan who gave permission for us to see the library and the showpieces that were upstairs and out of the publics reach.
While talking with the students we learned that Shrujan does not have the business model that we thought, in fact it is a not-for-profit trust where the income generated is put back into the project. This does not make it any less amazing though; it still works with over 3000 women across 100 villages. Shrujan provides all the materials and the design and pays the women immediately on completion of each piece of embroidery. As much as possible, responsibility for production is delegated to village women called Entrepreneurs who have been trained in organizational and business skills. If the workload warrants, an Entrepreneur can delegate work to a sub-Entrepreneur. This structure ensures that at the village level, management is always evolving, with training and responsibility being passed on to younger women. It is a very interesting model, but more similar to Kala Raksha than I previously thought. We still have several questions that will hopefully be answered when we send the email to the Wholesale Sales Manager.
After visiting Mr. Wazir twice and Shrujan, we still had some time on our hands. Wondering around the streets and alleys of Bhuj we stayed entertained and kept on sweating. We got lost several times only to end up on a street we had never seen and then back at the vegetable market we knew. Everything was different depending on the time of day, so never to bore the tourist who is there at the wrong time of year.
The bus back to Ahmedabad left at 4pm, Thank God it was more pleasant than the first. The view was nice, the A/C stayed on and we got in around 11pm. We had called our hotel in advance so they would know we were coming. The trip back ran unusually smooth.
This morning we took our time to wake up and head out; we had no goal in mind, no itinerary planned. The clouds looked a little low and I was wearing white, so of course it rained, the first shower of this years monsoon.