This Corporate Couple Found Their Calling In Creating Livelihood For Women In The Nilgiris

In a quaint mountain hamlet in South India, women from an indigenous community get together to knot, creating something unique almost everyday using 100% cotton yarn. Something they do with a lot of love and reverence. Something that has empowered them towards a better living. Something that has held their household together.  After finishing off their household chores, they sit down to knot their way into some stunning macrame pieces. Macrame is an ancient hand-art form practiced across the globe for centuries and is known for its therapeutic effect on it’s practitioners. For these women, it isn’t just a craft but a means to their livelihood. Before macrame, they had to struggle to make ends meet. The only work they could get needed them to leave their household very early in the day, travel for 1-2 hours and toil all day in the field or tea estates be it in rain or sun. Macrame allows them to work from their home - continue to manage their household, nourish their children and earn a better living.

This is the story of how Sunita Suhas found her purpose in life.

Although we had more than what we needed in life - a nice house, a nice car, a cute son and a cute dog for the son - there was always this sense of something missing and it took me some time to figure out that it was a sense of purpose. I know it sounds cliché but when you realise that you are on this perpetual treadmill running tirelessly but not really going anywhere, it can drive you up the wall. I was also not very happy with the quality of education my son was going through although he was going to the supposedly best school in town. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the conditioning he was developing. My husband, like most men in the corporate world, was married to his job. I knew I had to do something about this situation.

How did it began?

I first pulled my son out of school and put him on an unschooling journey - unschooling isn’t the same as home schooling. It is a child led learning approach, no prescribed curriculum. I then decided that we, as a family, should go on an unplanned free-flow road trip. Got my husband to take two months off from his work and we hopped into our sedan and embarked on this journey that was about to change our lives. This was year-end 2016. We started from Bangalore and travelled along the west coast, all the way up to Himachal Pradesh and then moved towards east through Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh before coming down through central India. We kept to rural India for most part of our journey. We covered over 10,000 km across 14 states. This experience rattled my thinking and changed my perspective of life. After we returned from this trip, I knew what we had to do. We quit our jobs, sold all that we had including our car and reduced our life into 5 bag packs. We wrapped our lives in the city and moved to the mountains - The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. I didn’t have a plan but, I believed that we’d figure it out.

We covered over 10,000 km across 14 states. This experience rattled my thinking and changed my perspective of life. After we returned from this trip, I knew what we had to do. We quit our jobs, sold all that we had including our car and reduced our life into 5 bag packs.

The Struggles

For starters, our family almost abandoned us because no one really could relate to the thinking. Secondly, moving to a new land with new cultures, new ways of life and a new language that we didn’t know, wasn’t going to be easy. I wanted to live off-grid so we bought a piece of the forest, cultivated the land, built ourselves an earth home and became part of an indigenous community. For over a year, we lived among the natives, far from civilisation. At first it was exciting. Living in the forest is what most city folks dream of doing. After just a couple of days, it was daunting. Holidaying in the forest and living in the forest are two different things altogether. Living among people we didn’t know or understand, living among the wild animals who also we didn’t understand, creepies, crawlies and above all the dark. There wasn’t stable supply of electricity, no stable network. It was scary to begin with and made me think if we were on the right path. But, as days went by, I became more and more comfortable with this new way of life. We got some livestock, grew some food, made mistakes and learnt from those mistakes.

 Finding the Purpose

It was here and now that I realised that there was a serious issue unfolding right in front of us - lack of livelihood. The men ventured out for daily wage work in farm, estates or construction sites but the money seldom made it’s way back into the household. The women were left to manage the household and children with limited or no means to livelihood. They were vulnerable. I felt I should do something about this and this was the ‘purpose’ I was missing in our lives earlier. I along with my husband decided to start a social enterprise with the intent of up-skilling these women into first generation artisans and enabling them towards a steady livelihood by providing market linkages.

It’s been two years since and we now support 21 women across four villages in The Nilgiris. We intend to impact 50 women by the end of 2022.

 What we learnt:

Humans are blessed with intuition so it’s natural for one to have a nagging itch or question in terms of one’s existence or future. What is not natural is not listening to this intuition. It’s a missed opportunity if you don’t listen and act. I listened to my intuition about something missing in my life and I stepped out of my comfort to find an answer.

It is never late to stop what you are doing and start something afresh if that’s what makes you happy. I was 40 when I made a decision to move to the mountains and start afresh.

Travel inspires. Travel to discover your country, stay in the rural landscape and travel by road. There’s soo much to learn and be inspired. My road trip changed my outlook towards life. Don’t shy away from pushing your boundaries. You’d be surprised how much you can push. I had no idea I could get comfortable with snakes and scorpions crawling in your living space. Elephants, bears and Bisons visiting us often. Cooking food with firewood while all I was used to was an automated kitchen. Drinking water directly from a forest stream. The easier thing to do was to give-up and return. But, the easier path always bears the lesser fortune.

This was the worst moment of my life…

It was the time when I made the switch from the cities to the mountains. My extended family were the first to desert us as they felt I was taking my husband and son towards doom. It was then the phase where we were in a new land among new people and a new language. Most of all, a new way of life in the mountains and a forest. There was so much to learn and adapt. We had no help, we had to do it all ourselves.

 Why I made the switch was very clear to me from the beginning so all through the struggles, I had to just keep reminding myself why this is important. That kept me going and off course, I had my husband’s support through this entire journey which helped me pull through.

What next for me?

I intend to grow my ">enterprise to higher grounds so that I am in a position to impact more women in this region and beyond. I also intend to write about our journey more so that others read and realise that it’s not impossible to make such transitions in life. What’s more important is that you are happy. If everyone in this world was truly happy - wouldn’t it be such a lovely planet to live in?

Sunita Suhas is the co-founder and director of India Yards. The views expressed are the author's own.