The district of Shamli is bursting with talent, only it is buried in quiet by-lanes of villages and unkempt city streets, away from the gaze of the world at large. We have resolved to change that, albeit with slow and steady steps.

First, we are profiling and showcasing talent wherever we find it. Once we have a sufficient database, we aspire to connect talented people with resources and networks that can sustain it and hopefully turn it into a vocation for some. We are still far away from that goal. But we are starting to find people that are gifted in various different ways.

Our primary effort for now is with women who craft papier-mache bowls in villages across Shamli. We started to find women who could potentially be interested in making these bowls for a market in the village Nala. More recently, we have found women in other villages similarly interested in exploring their potential as crafts-persons – in Usmanpur, Hurmanjpur and a few other villages. We would like very much for these to be in a crafts market in Delhi and marketed elsewhere, both online and off it and we are slowly trying to find ways of making this happen.

Meanwhile, there are other kinds of talent we are exploring, to begin with to profile and place in the public domain. From singers to makers of colourful rugs to those who make the best farm-axes in all of north India. Here is a pastiche of what we are discovering about Shamli.