“My mother-in-law sews with me now. We talk more than we ever did.”
Lakshmi came to Darji in 2022 on a single-day trial. She had never worked outside the house before and wasn't sure she would come back. She did — the next morning, and every morning after that.
She works on school uniforms, specifically the pinafore — the most precisely cut piece in the entire range. Measurements have to be exact, seams have to be flat, and every batch goes through her check before it leaves the studio. Four years in, she is the person her team comes to when something does not look right.
The detail she mentions most when talking about this work is not the income or the independence, though both matter to her. It is that her mother-in-law started sewing alongside her a year after she joined. They sit together in the mornings now. She says they talk more than they ever did before.
