Every morning, Nikhita Kini and her father would have a version of the same conversation. “Which shirt should I wear,” he would mutter. “Try the pink or mauve one today,” she would often say.
Narasimha Kini would usually choose one of his favourites. “Dad couldn’t get enough of blue,” she says. Sometimes, he would go with her pick. Then the 68-year-old marketing executive would smile and head for the door.
When Kini died in 2019, Nikhita didn’t know what to do with the shirts. She didn’t want to give them away; not the ones he’d loved, and not the peach, pink and mauve ones that she had urged him to wear.
Panels from these now form a patchwork pattern on a queen-sized quilt. There is no blue in this one; panels from his blue shirts have been stitched into another quilt, which Nikhita gave to her brother, Nikhil Kini, who lives in the US.
“When I use the quilt, I feel his presence,” says Nikhita, 31.
Both quilts were hand-stitched over about eight weeks, by the women of Purkal Stree Shakti Samiti (or women’s strength society), a social enterprise launched in the village of Purkal in Dehradun district, Uttarakhand.
The enterprise employs about 100 underprivileged women from across 40 villages. It was set up by Chinni Swamy, 78, who moved here from Mumbai with her husband, the late Gopal Krishna Swamy, in 2003.
Chinni, a homemaker who dabbled in quilting, found that numerous local women were eager to supplement their income, and began to teach them patchwork, hand-quilting and applique. She sold the products locally, mainly through word of mouth and at handicraft fairs, and shared the proceeds.
“We started at my house with one specially abled woman,” Chinni says. “As more joined, the house turned into a makeshift workshop.” It kept growing, and Chinni and the women moved, for a while, into a local school set up by her husband.
By 2020, 200 women were involved. Then the pandemic hit, and the business stalled. Three young fashion designers who were working with the group, Banee Batta, Aastha Giri and Aiswarya Enolla Patri, stepped up to revive it. Later that year, the 30-year-olds offered a fresh infusion of funds, and came on board as co-founders of Purkal Stree Shakti Samiti 2.0.
Many of the women now work from home; two centres in Dehradun allow them to collaborate on larger orders. The enterprise now uses social-media platforms and its website (purkalstreeshakti.org) to sell quilts, cushion and pillow covers, bags, toys and notebook jackets made by the women, among a host of other products. But the most unusual offering is the memorial quilt.
Kini’s was their first such order. “Since I had grown up watching my aunt quilt, I thought of this for my father’s shirts, but I didn’t know whom to reach out to. Then I came across a post by comedian Mallika Dua, on the work done by Purkal Stree Shakti Samiti, and reached out to them on Instagram,” Kini says.
The pre-stitching stage involved careful conversations with her. “When they asked me about my father, I told them about his weakness for shades of blue, which helped them design the two quilts… It was a relief to know that his shirts would be handled with respect, patience, care. They even retained the ballpen marks on some of his pockets.”
After she gave one quilt to her brother last June (she’d been unable to open the boxes for about three months), Kini created an Instagram Reel about them, which was shared widely. It currently has over 230,000 likes, and it turned a spotlight on the group.
The samiti has since had more than 100 orders for memory and memorial quilts, including some from as far away as London and Kuwait. “These orders have reminded us of the healing power these quilts hold,” says Batta. “They help the women we work with create a ripple effect of empowerment and shared experiences, love and heritage.”
One unusual quilt was made as a celebration of new life. A mother from the US commissioned it for her teenager, says Radha Paswan, 45, a quality inspector with the enterprise. It took six months to complete this piece, because the women didn’t cut up the garments. “The clothes we were sent were from when the teen was a toddler. There were tiny overalls, little caps, booties…. We didn’t have the heart to cut them up,” says Paswan, a mother of two, who has been with the group for 15 years. “We designed the quilt in such a way that they were stitched on intact. It will forever capture the parents’ love.”
As part of another order, for a memorial quilt, the samiti received a carton of saris and kurtis. They were sent in, in November, by the daughter of a Delhi woman who died in the 26/11 terror attacks. The final quilt uses disparate fabrics — cotton, silk, khadi, linen, preserved carefully since 2008 — to create an elegant pattern in green, turquoise, white, purple, maroon and gold.
The memorial and memory quilts are challenging, Paswan says. There’s little control over the colour palette, a range of fabrics to be incorporated, and, often, personalised messages or monograms to be hand-embroidered into them too. They take, on average, 15 to 20 weeks as a result, and prices start at ₹12,000.
Shipping costs extra; it covers the dispatch of the quilt and the return of unused material.
“We know that the clothes our clients send in are more than just clothes,” says Batta. “So, the scraps left over, and the items unused, are sent back to them.”
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