Winter Sun

Winter Sun

Somedays, I go for solitary morning walks wrapped in my shawl.
The winter garden is faded with fog
and the wind among the branches
of the wayside trees is solemn and still.

I slip out of my kolhapuris 
and walk barefoot on the dew-bathed grass.
Cold slowly starts to seep into me,
making me one with the wintry earth.

High on the trees, some birds begin to sing.  
I take a deep breath and exhale,
the evidence of being alive comes out of my mouth
as a visual breath, like a cloud. 
Love the world today

Love the world today

Spring has slowly ripened into summer. The earth is moving-in closer to the sun and the air is unbearably humid. Even as we go about our days with sticky skin and fretting minds, the Gulmohar tree bent with flowery clusters, resounds with the Koel’s song. I look out from my window, lured. A sweet respite amidst the sharp heat. And a beautiful reminder to love this world for the songs it sings for us. 
May 11, 2022 — Dipna Daryanani
#FounderDiaries - 1

#FounderDiaries - 1

SUSTAINABILITY - I’ve been thinking about this word for a while now and as a maker also asking myself the question - ‘how is making more sustainable?’

Over time the meaning of the word has changed for me from a macro to micro level. The realisation that change truly starts with ourselves. It has made me question about the ways in which we function at Love the World Today. It makes me revisit our core every now and then and stick to it like nothing else matters. That also simplifies decision making.

Of course two of the most critical aspects are

  • Sourcing right and the ways of making
  • Reducing waste, and upcycling whatever waste is generated into something of value and function

But beyond these measures, our focus has shifted greatly to the things I’m about to mention. These have always been part of our processes but now hold a much higher value because of the contribution they make towards building a sustainable brand. 

1. Design elements - Paying attention to how a garment’s usage can be made longer, especially in the case of children since they outgrow clothes so quickly. 

Use of elastic waist bands (and ensuring they are of good quality so they last), roomy neck openings, adjustable tie up options, loose yet stylish silhouettes, layering possibilities so outfits are not bound by seasonality and versatility to ensure clothes can be used from occasion wear to casual wear with just a little tweak in styling. 

2. QUALITY! - Cannot emphasise enough on this. The chances of clothes reaching landfills or discarded easily is lower if they are made of great quality and if they are designed to love and last. Great design and quality also encourages people to hand down the clothes to another loved one. 

Quality comes from investing in durable textiles, skilful un compromised tailoring (for example - the use of french seam finishes, which is more time consuming and expensive but ensures the garment will have fewer chances of tears and rips apart from the fact that it’s these little details that make a difference in finish. Another example is something as basic as providing extra buttons to encourage people to repair and fix instead of discard. 

We’ve had customers tell us that LTWT designs have lasted them almost 2+ years (in spite of a growing child) and even after that they’ve been able to pass them on to others. 

3. Closing the loop by offering to take responsibility - Providing a solution to the busy ones, the non-creative ones. 

Sometimes people do care but may not be able to do much for whatever reasons. This is where as a brand, we step in and offer support beyond the relationship of just a purchase. 

For LTWT customers, once your child outgrows a Love the World Today garment, you can send the clothes back to us. We will donate the ones in good condition and upcycle the ones that aren’t. This is our attempt at closing the loop and finding solutions for the complex issues of the fashion industry.

We set this policy out even before we were available for purchase in October 2015. Of course it helps since we started out small and it seemed implementable and manageable at our scale. 

To be honest, in over 4 years, we’ve only had three enquiries about clothes being returned and never received any clothes. We are hopeful that this is because in India we still have a system of hand me downs. But we keep reiterating and reminding in our communications to ensure that customers know that they can reach out to us even 2-3 years after purchase. 

With this we hope we are able to give you an insight into our approach to sustainability besides our choice to work with organic cotton, handwoven cotton, natural dye, low impact dye textiles, recycled fabric packaging, upcycling waste. 

And with this we are also looking at replacing the term ‘sustainable’ clothing  brand with ‘mindful’ clothing brand because every choice we make at LTWT is one that must support our vision of creating a mindful, kind, inclusive world.

We wear stories

We wear stories

Little girl dressed in an adorable organic cotton natural dyed pink pinafore maxi dress smiling and twirling

Past year has been about dresses and skirts. With this intention, we bought the tie & dye, panelled pinafore maxi dress from Love The World Today for Noor’s 5th birthday. This soon became her favourite dress. I guess it made her feel fancy yet comfortable. This dress has been extensively used to dance and prance around in throughout the day.

Earlier this year, a friend loaned us The Clever Tailor by Srividhya Venkat to read over the summers. It is the story of a thrifty tailor who uses his creativity and imagination to make something for each member of his family. He repurposes the same piece of fabric to make something for his entire family thereby creating a beautiful kahaani (story) that would never wear out. 

For me, this was a beautiful story of upcycling, of creatively reusing an item, to keep it in use indefinitely. 

A few days back, I noticed that the bib part of the pinafore dress was getting tighter. My daughter pulled the straps tightly and one of the buttons came off. My immediate thought was to retire this dress, maybe put it in the donation pile. In today's day and age, it seems easier to just go out and pick up new things.

My mother, masi and granny would often talk about how they wore each other’s clothes, borrowed baby clothes for the next child in the family. However, somewhere during our parent’s aspirational generation, the practice of repurposing (upcycling), exchanging and passing on items to others (swap or preloved) faded. Our generation grew up always wanting more, shopping for therapy and throwing away regardless of the environmental costs and concerns.

I was no different. I decided to donate the dress. I washed it and put it out to dry and started browsing for new dresses. However, little miss sunshine wasn't ready to part ways with her dress. She picked it up from the clothesline and tied the loose straps into a knot at the back, and happily got busy playing in her halter dress. I noticed that she wore her shirt on top of the dress to keep warm. The earthy mama angel took over my thought process and I started browsing Pinterest on ideas to upcycle the pinafore maxi dress into a skirt.

Originally, I thought that I could DIY myself around this upcycling project. But, I don't know how to mend, never bothered to learn it. In fact, mending as a skill isn't taught anymore in homes and schools. Repurposing, Repairing and Refashioning are becoming a lost art. 

The greater challenge that I faced was that this dress came with invisible pockets, and like me, my daughter likes her dresses with pockets. Usable pockets to sneak in her pretend house keys, her handkerchief or few coins, crayons and chalks. I wasn't about to lose these pretty pockets while trying to refashion the dress myself. So, crippled by my own lack of sewing and mending skills, I went to my local tailor. I explained to him my intentions with urgent passion. He smiled and said, "Madamji, yeh toh hamare roz ka kaam hai. Aap tension mat lo!" (Madam, we do this repair work on a daily basis. You don’t stress, we will take care of it)… And voila, in 10 minutes a totally rad skirt was refashioned with pockets and all. I call it the Super Speedy Skirt! 

 My daughter was over the moon with this dress to skirt refashion. She twirled around in her skirt for a long time, pairing it with different colors. This basic transformation came with a personal parental realization that being happy with what we have is an important lesson that we as parents need to imbibe and transfer onto our children.

Half year later, the dress that became a skirt and the skirt that had been worn way too many times, got a rip. My daughter still wanted to keep wearing her skirt. You know how well-worn clothes are softer and comfortable. They feel nice and warm against the skin. The same was the case with this skirt. We retired the skirt from outdoor box and made a space for it in the home wear box. However, months later she had completely worn this skirt out. So, taking clues from the book ‘The Clever Tailor’, I decided to get the skirt repurposed into a doll dress and some handkerchiefs. 

The best part about upcycling is that you are always giving a new use or value adding to an old item. It is essentially giving something old a new meaning! That’s exciting for sure.

Also, there is an indescribable feeling of reverence towards the workmanship of the tailor who helps one in making something broken, whole again. This time too, our local tailor stitched the doll dress with same patience, as he would do for any human garment. This time, Noor sat at his shop observing while he sewed Velcro patches onto her doll dress.

I have seen the LTWT dress go through these transformations, thereby extending the lifecycle of the clothing. I would like to think that we too were weaving a beautiful kahaani (story) with each upcycling idea with this dress. I have seen firsthand the joy that it brought to my daughter. I am documenting this so that when she grows up she can read this and relive the story and also in the hopes that it inspires readers to start and share their upcycling ideas and initiatives with their favorite LTWT clothes.

Neha Chopra aka Jugni

[believes that people around the world have an innate desire to dream, share and express. She is an earthy mama storyteller and lifestyle blogger at  Jugniology and a Birth Photographer & Filmmaker at Storiously. She is a prenatal and babywearing dance teacher at GroovaRoo with Jugni , it is her passion to spread the joyful energy of rhythm and movement to babies and their families in India.]

Upcycling and repurposing a little girl's dress into her doll's dress

 

Joy over Glamour

Joy over Glamour

[Photo credit - Nirmala Patil]
Once again, it is that time of the year… for genda (marigold) torans to brightly gleam on doorways, kitchens to puff up with the scent of homemade mithai (sweets) and namkeen (savouries), for the sweet chaos of shopping new clothes and gifts, for thousands of earthen diyas (lamps) to light up these last autumnal nights, and to make merry with family and friends. But it is also that time of the year where age-old traditions get seamlessly inherited by young ones, and old memories merge into new.
All the Diwalis of my childhood come huddled to meet the Diwalis I now celebrate with my own child. The old images I have in my mind of my father dressed in his white kurta pyjama stirring milk to make kheer in a large brass utensil on our Diwali mornings slowly renews into a newer image in my daughter’s mind as she sits on the kitchen counter watching me stir the cardamom-scented milk. The soft weight of gendas as I held their garlands in my little arms while my father hung them over our shop shutter is now transferred into my daughter’s five-year-old palms as she picks them up one by one from the basket and offers them to me to string into a garland.
Each year, as I watch more and more of my Diwali memories reshaping to become my daughter’s, I’m made acutely aware of the change in the landscapes of both our childhoods. Where during my times, wearing new clothes and receiving gifts on Diwali were truly special as they were decidedly annual affairs, perhaps besides birthdays. Today, neither wearing new clothes nor receiving gifts are exclusive to Diwali, thus, diluting their specialness. Then there’s the tradition of homemade festive snacks that are mostly, for convenience’s sake, replaced by store-bought treats, thus, making the festivities less intimate. The simplicity and richness of my old Diwali seems to be updated by the glamorous and expensiveness Diwali of today. And this withering of what was once both gratifying and deeply meaningful into something one-dimensional and overstimulating, bothers me and urges me to reconsider how we’d like to celebrate Diwali with our daughter this year and for years to come. 
To begin with, maybe being a bit mindful of ‘what’ we’d like to fill-up our children’s festive memories with, can be a good gift to give them this Diwali. Choosing a signature family tradition like - partaking in the ritual of abhyanga snana first thing on festival mornings, or sitting with children stringing gendas to make garlands for doorways, or indulging their playful assistance in home-making simple festive snacks, or taking time to hand-roll cotton wicks to light earthen oil lamps; all of them can bring us together as family and stamp strong visual motifs in our little ones’ hearts. Instead of flooding them with excessive gifts, it maybe a valuable alternative to offer experiences through trips to natural environments, museums, libraries, national parks or ancient monuments. And in lieu of an evening spent bursting crackers, it maybe a more eco and friendly thought to invite our house-help and her children for an evening feast; not to teach our children how to treat her kindly but to show them how to treat her equally.
Maybe with these small, mindful ways we can choose joy over glamour this Diwali and help shape our children’s festive memories into a sweet thing of meaning and beauty.
Fading memories

Fading memories

[Photo credit - Nirmala Patil]
This year, on autumn’s first full moon, we’ll celebrate our daughter’s fifth birthday. Five years. How does one measure five years - of a child’s growing poetry, of a woman’s emotional motherhood, and their immeasurable days together? Outside as daylight silently fades leaving a darkening sky to wait for its moon, I hold my love up like a lantern and rummage through the drawers of my heart to gather five years worth of memories. Some of them are already yellowing at the edges, some other are loosing their colours; making the recollection of these fading memories somewhat bittersweet.
First, there’s a recent one. Of the whole of last summer capsuled in a single memory of one watermelon seed stuck on her bare stomach with juice - a black mole beside her laughing belly button.
Then there’s a memory deeply etched from her first year - of her soft sleeping form, with fingers curled, lips just barely parted, cheeks spilling over and sweat glistening on her forehead like morning dew on a carpet of grass. 
In the garden, I am sitting on a bench under a tree shade with my camera resting by my side and a book in my lap that I keep opening and closing; to glimpse at her from time to time. As I read, the shadow of the mid-morning light dancing between the leaves above faintly tattoo my open page. Then I look up, and find her squatting over the stone-cobbled garden path, a found-chalk in hand busily drawing. I remember instantly picking up my camera and capturing the scene. The resultant pictures are still somewhere inside a folder on the computer, but the finer and fading details of that morning remain inside me. 
It was a few mornings after my father passed away, I have a memory of the brightly mild December sun painted on her face as she played on our bed beside the eastward window. As if the colour of those mornings that came right after he left were gold, and the memory of her face - a golden reminder of those December mornings.  
The fading scar on her left chest, from falling over my sewing machine when she had just begun walking.
There are also memories that are like glass bangles bundled in a paper. All of them of the same colour but glinting a little differently as they catch light at slightly different angles. Memories of all the mornings we spent in the balcony of our present home during our first year here are like those glass bangles, only glinting differently in different seasons; during the first warm months - sitting on our chatai reading books, gazing at clouds passing overhead, or watching the hills-cape with happy greedy hearts; during our first monsoon here - with wonderful thunderstorms and a game of spotting waterfalls coming down the hill; during all those autumn mornings, where the only thing she seemed to live for was to soak up the autumn sun as much as she could, lying on the floor and squinting into the blue-gold sky. As I revisit these memories, I’m thankful for the seasons - bookmarks helping me find so many cherished moments. 
A mother’s hands have memories of their own. Mine carry in them memories of her growing weight. There’s one of her going up and down the slide in the garden. I do not remember what she was wearing, but I remember her sweat-kissed forehead as she came to sit by my side by the sandpit. I remember my hands instinctively wiping the sweat off her skin and my fingers combing through her damp hair inviting air between her wet strands. That memory of her moist long hair between my fingers still lingers there. 
As more memories come to meet me in my heart, I begin to wonder what my daughter’s memories may be made of? What she’ll remember from these five years with me? Will she remember how I used kisses in lieu of bandages. Will she remember all the times I stopped to stare at the moss with her or gather flowers and seeds by the wayside forgetting minutes and people pass by? Will she remember how I was never part of the jolly group of mothers who often stood by the society corners easily chatting and laughing away? Will she remember my unideal and many-hued love - sometimes lush green, almost to the point of happy tears; other times an absent-minded mauve, as if lost in another world and loving from afar; and some other times stark, tender and all-forgiving as midnight?
   
Will she remember… or perhaps as she grows and blossoms, year after year, all her memories of these five years will grow faint and fade away, making way for new palettes? I sit thinking of this for a few more minutes. It will be a loss, not knowing her memories, but strangely it doesn’t feel like a loss. Slowly I return myself back to my own yellowing memories and hold them a little more closer. Against the blankness of hers, my fading memories in all their mortal loveliness feel like such special gifts. Sometimes what we cannot know can be a beautiful measure for all things immeasurable. 
[Nirmala Patil]
bidding adieu

bidding adieu

rain story
[photo story - Nirmala Patil]
Why there is music

Why there is music

[Photo credit - Nirmala Patil]

Sitting in the dark, my hand softly stroking my belly, I often whispered my love to the tiny infant blooming inside me. I think that’s when music in the form of a mother’s voice first dribbled into my daughter’s ears. That, along with the echo of my beating heart. It’s been four and half years since, and music still continues to fill her ears and our days in myriad ways. 

A 2016 study at the University of Southern California’s Brain and Creativity Institute found that musical experiences in childhood can actually accelerate brain development, thereby impacting a child’s intelligence and leading to improvements in other areas – an idea known as “transfer effects”. Repeated studies show that early music exposure and education in young ones ignites their intellectual, social, emotional, motor, language, and overall literacy. It helps in self-expression, strengthens memory, and refines discipline and patience. 
This wisdom acquired instinctively over centuries is perhaps why music is such an intrinsic part of our culture as a country, and is already present in many aspects of our lives - be it festivals, worship, seasons, celebrations and ceremonies - which naturally lends itself into a child’s world too. Then there are regional compositions like rhymes and lullabies, pass-down through generations, that respire through every child’s childhood. Thus, right from the time of birth, music is traditionally used to calm and soothe children, to express love and joy, or to simply engage and interact.

To us as a family, music translates into a more personal yet expansive, and a proximate daily experience. Although our daughter isn’t enrolled for a formal musical training yet, many sounds resonating around us weave to become our everyday rāga. Right from waking up to the song of the morning birds, which to my little girl is an invitation into a new day of playful adventure - to all the diverse tones we use to converse with her; loving, stern, or comical. Together with, the softly murmuring breeze between curtains, the orchestra of utensils in the kitchen, the gurgle of water at bath time, the melody of silence at sleep time, flapping of pigeon feathers in the balcony, the cacophony of construction on the hill, roar of an aircraft passing overhead, the chime of the doorbell when papa returns home in the evenings, crickets chirping at nightfall, and many more sound textures making music of our everyday. Each sound subliminally educating our daughter of our rhythmic alignment with nature.

Most mornings, she spends time with her Nani learning Kannada rhymes. And on our outdoor walks we love to play a favourite game, where I encourage her to close her eyes and identify as many sounds around us. We also include a good dose of music-listening, both Indian Classical and Western Contemporary, to evolve her senses. Some days, we sit with translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s extraordinarily beautiful children poems and marvel at its meaning and lyricism. All this seamlessly contributing to the melodious garland her days wear around their neck, thereby nurturing her heart and brain through osmosis.

But what truly makes music so indispensable to our family culture, apart from it’s developmental benefits, is the joy it brings. When I hear my daughter crooning her self-composed songs on the swing, when she glows with love on hearing her favourite ‘twinkle twinkle’ because it reminds her of her infancy, when she cascades with laughter at bedtime listening to my amusing version of an old rhyme, when she picks the manjīrā (Indian hand cymbals), softly clanks it and holds it against her ears to listen to it’s trembling song. Utter, limitless joy. Transforming our ordinary everyday moments into small musical celebrations, and gently reminding me of why there is music in this world. 

“When I sing to make you dance, my child
I truly know why there is music in leaves,
and why waves send their chorus of voices
to the heart of the listening earth”
- Excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore’s Crescent Moon

[Nirmala Patil]
My story of love

My story of love

[Photo - Nirmala Patil]
He was coming home for the first time, to meet my parents. It was a windy June morning and I remember being drawn to the play of wind between the curtains, as I sat waiting for him in our small living room. And the very first thing I noticed when he arrived was how he’d made no effort to dress up or present himself to impress, just as he’d done when we first met each other. A little more piece of my heart was conquered by his continued honesty; for who he truly, plainly was. Minutes turned into hours as introductions were made, conversations flowed; like rain stream down a hill, and an unannounced relationship started sprouting between my parents and him.
Then we had lunch, which I’d specially prepared earlier that morning. But what we ate for lunch and every other detail about the day have come to be a blur in my mind, except for what unfolded right after lunch. And it makes me wonder if this is so because we tend to guard and devote our inner space, unbeknownst to ourselves, to only those thoughts and memories that are more precious, letting the rest fade away.
So what lingers inside me starkly from that afternoon are moments after lunch, when we sat down by ourselves, talking and touching each other with our thoughts, and he quietly brought out a package from his bag and offered it to me. A gift. Wrapped in khaki paper and secured with cotton string. Simple and unpretentious, like an echo of his own personality. A little more piece of my heart was conquered. And as I unwrapped the package, what lay inside waiting to become mine was something I’d never received from anyone else. A white Khadi sari speckled with gray leaf motifs. Soft to the touch and beautiful in its weave. Making its giver a special first in my life, not because it was unthinkably expensive or rare, but because among all the loving things I was gifted over the years by my family and friends, I’d never received a cotton (the only fabric I ever wear) sari in a colour I loved most before. This little act of knowing, so beautifully unsaid and un-underlined, seemed to have silently sealed us into a union that day.
And ever since, this tangible piece of clothing has carried in its folds such precious intangible memories. That a mere touch, wafts me away into that windy, balmy June afternoon a decade ago. 
Now ten years later, well-worn and fraying around the edges, I still continue to cherish this gift like a treasure, drape it around me like our old song of growing love, and offer its memory here, as a souvenir to the warm-hearted campaign #storiesoflove* by Love the World Today.
*A thoughtful initiative against fast fashion and a sweet reminder to buy less and care more; thereby prolonging the value of all-things-we-own whether bought, gifted or inherited. 
                                                                                    [Nirmala Patil]