Two addresses.
Our parents arrived with two suitcases and a phone number. We arrived a generation later, already home, and still got asked where we were really from.
Pardes means a foreign land. For them it was here. For us it is sometimes there.
What we carry.
Two addresses and one wardrobe.
The clothes never fit the question.
There was the kurta for weddings and the hoodie for everything else. Nothing for the days in between, which is most days.
What existed was loud. Slogans, flags, jokes about chai. We wanted something our grandmothers would recognise and our friends would simply think was a good sweatshirt.
So we made the in-between.
Heavy cotton, cut the way we already dress. Then one detail from the other address: a kolam looped around its dots, a line of jaali down a seam, chikankari at a collar, a block printed stripe in marigold.
Most of it is stitched in the same colour as the cloth. You have to be close to see it.
See the kolam pieces
Made when you ask for it.
Nothing sits in a warehouse. Each piece is made after you order it. That takes a few days longer, keeps every size open and wastes nothing.
Quiet detail
One reference per piece, tone on tone. If it needs explaining, it is too loud.
Made to order
Cut and finished after you buy. No overstock, no clearance.
Two homes
Named, drawn and checked by people who grew up between both.