Mother are daughter are in indigo. Saraswathi Vausudevan sits behind a stall, after the morning inauguration of her Mahima, an art and craft bazaar by women, held in Thiruvananthapuram. Her face would be familiar to a generation of students who went to the Holy Angels’ ISC or the Trivandrum International School, where she would talk of Trigonometry so soothingly that you forgot this was Mathematics and not English poetry. Somewhere along, Saraswathi turned to jewellery making, opened a place in Thiruvananthapuram, and had been putting up exhibitions every anniversary. One year, however, the crowd became too much to fit into her store, so she rented a hall, invited other entrepreneurs and put up an exhibition called Mahima. She wanted Mahima to be about women empowerment, to bring a platform to those entrepreneurs who didn’t find one easily. This year, Saraswathi found five woman entrepreneurs – six including her own stall – to put up different products, for a three-day exhibition.
Aswathy
“We decided it should be one product for one vendor,” Saraswathi says. If it were the same kind of products in every stall, there would be competition even there, and the amount you took back home would not be worth the effort, she realised. So her stall is handmade jewellery from her shop Tejas and accompanying her is her daughter Priyanka, with her handmade Christmas décor and crochet coasters and woolen bookmarks. Next stall is Veena’s Art n Grace with its scented candles and kitchen notes and more, using the technique of decoupage. “I began that as a hobby,” Veena says. Ranjini Krishnan stands next to her with her Body Tree products, soaps and more, using organic ingredients.
On the other side are three more stalls. Aswathy Jayakumar stands with the kurtis designed at her I-Wear online boutique. Marietta went for a younger clientele with frocks she stitched from scratch for little girls. “I started doing that for my daughter. Then I thought I will stitch for other children too,” she says. Little Fairies is her online page. Last stall, up front are run by two women – Beena of Lavanya Cards and Bakes with her yummy cupcakes and cookies and greeting cards bearing messages made with glitter foam, and her friend Aswani with her pickles.
Stall by Little Fairies.
“I wanted all of it to be handcrafted products,” Saraswathi says. The exhibition, being held at the Women’s Club in Kowdiar, ends tomorrow.
