My father took up the spinning wheel after hearing Bapu speak. When Bapu put on the pancha, my father put on the pancha. I was just a boy, but I too listened.
In my mind all that I have is all that I have, and no more, but my little shop is the center of the universe. No one has a more subtle hand with the finest cloth. I wait, and the work does come.
My mother was an honest woman. She had shiny black hair that she grew to below her waist. She could take it and coil and uncoil the shock of hair so that to my brothers and sisters it became a living thing, a force that identified her as more than our mother. She became our Bhuvaneshvari, she who would chase all our childish demons from our hearts and minds.
Sometimes I think back to my year at the university. Sometimes three or four of my fellow students would sit in my father’s house and discuss what we were reading during the week. We had long arguments about the meaning of life and often referred to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness as if we had written that text by our own hand.
One of father’s favorite quotations from the Gita was that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. He memorized the entire Gita in his tenth year. I did not. I think now that I should have, and I keep reading and rereading and slowly it is coming to be a part of me.
The best moments are when I am silent and the customers are speaking of what they wish the piece of cloth to become. Their voices begin to rise and fall with some urgency, their pace quickens. If they are women, the pitch will become higher, and if two or three women are in front of me, the discussion will take place in a manner that is capable of stopping shooting stars in flight.
My wife—bless her—tells me that I am vain in front of women. When she hears the women getting louder in conversation, she comes from back in the shop and stands between them and me. Then, she joins the conversation. Her voice matches their voices and at such times I have heard passing dogs howl. I would never tell her such a thing.
I tell her she is as beautiful as the day I married her. That she is, is true.
Had I stayed at the university, I think that I should have become a psychologist. I understand people. Why? Because I am a man who listens. Even when I seem to be thinking of other things. My wife will say that I am not listening when I am not looking at her.
I tease her and say that I can look at her when she is speaking and not hear her.
My father’s death was sudden, and my mother mourned for three years. I came into the shop and took out the older equipment and bought three sewing machines from an aunt.
When the cloth is in my hands, I am sculpting. The more colors, the more I am painting. My hands are my eyes and my eyes are my hands. Sometimes I hear the cloth speak.
My mother touched her forehead to mine and told me that I am blessed.
In my mind this life is as life should be. I wait. The work will come. Ladson 2013
