Tonight I am lying on my bed, the room quiet, the air cold, and I am thinking about privilege. Not as a slogan. Not as guilt. As a fact of my life. In a country of 140 crore people, where many live day to day and hand to mouth, I was allowed to start from a different line. My father carried the weight of zero to one. He took the fall, made the trade-offs, and built the floor under my feet. Because of that, I could try, fail, and try again without the fear that swallows most first attempts. Because of that, Banjaaran Studio could even exist.
I am grateful for the obvious things. A room with an AC. An education that taught me how to think. A mother who shaped my mind with discipline and care. A father who sacrificed comfort so his children could choose. I am also grateful for the less visible things. The permission to dream without apology. The grief that sharpened my focus when life turned hard. The ability to be exhausted by my own thoughts rather than by the hunt for a day’s wage. These are privileges. I do not dress them up as anything else.
But privilege, if it is only comfort, becomes wasteful very fast. Privilege is useful only when it becomes responsibility. In my world that responsibility shows up as work that creates more work for others. The day a new pair ships is not just a sale. It is proof that a chain of quiet, unglamorous decisions held together: leather sourced ethically, designs refined, last-minute defects rejected, wages paid on time, tea poured for a tired team, machines maintained, and a karigar’s signature sitting invisibly inside a stitch. A job exists because all of that holds.
People sometimes think the impact is the story, the photos, the launch. Those help, but the real impact is payroll clearing without drama. It is the apprentice who becomes a skilled karigar and then trains someone else. It is a workshop that smells of leather and polish rather than fear. It is the difference between a gig and a livelihood.
I run a small business. We employ 40 to 50 people directly, depending on the month. In a country like ours, that number matters. Each job is a household. Each household is a small future. When I say I will not waste my privilege, this is what I mean. I will turn it into predictable salaries, safe workspaces, training that compounds, and a culture where human dignity is not a line in a deck but the starting point.
There is another layer to this. I often hear that money is the goal. For me, money is a by-product. It matters because it pays for continuity and for the parts of the work that stay unseen. It is not why I wake up. I wake up for the work of building. I wake up for my mother. She is no longer here, but she made me who I am, and when she went away she left me with something that refuses to give up. That is why I get up every day. That is why I keep going when it would be easier to stop.
I also owe something very personal. I owe my mother the promise that her effort did not end with me. I owe my father the proof that his sacrifices became engines, not cushions. I owe my team the kind of leadership that keeps the pressure on me, not on them. If I am privileged enough to be tired from chasing my dreams, I should be the one absorbing the uncertainty, not passing it down the chain.
Here is how I plan to keep that promise:
- Keep craft at the center. Our products are not just inventory. They are the sum of people’s time. If the output does not honor the input, the brand is just noise.
- Build quality jobs, not just jobs. Fair pay is baseline. Add predictability, training, growth, and a culture that treats people like adults. If we cannot upgrade the job, we should rethink the product.
- Choose scale that does not crush. Rapid expansion that burns out teams is just vanity dressed as ambition. I prefer scale that strengthens the spine. Fewer shortcuts, fewer excuses.
- Protect attention. The world rewards distraction. I will keep the workshop and the brand free from the addiction to trend cycles and panic decisions. Better to ship one meaningful thing than five forgettable pieces.
- Stay local in spirit even when we sell global. The roots must hold if the branches are going to grow. Our brand should sound like where it is from, not like an imitation of somewhere else.
- Keep learning publicly. If something fails, say so. If something works, document the process. There is value in showing the work, not just the win.
This is not a manifesto. It is a reminder. For myself first. Privilege can make you soft if you let it. It can also make you brave if you decide that comfort is not the point. I would like to choose bravery more often than comfort.
I do not know how far this road goes. I know only that I am responsible for how I walk it. If I am fortunate enough to have a platform, I want to turn that platform into pathways for others. If I am fortunate enough to have resources, I want to turn those resources into reliable systems. If I am fortunate enough to have a voice, I want to use it to speak about the parts that are harder to photograph. The long meetings. The hard trade-offs. The invisible patience.
I am crying as I write this. Two years ago today, I lost my mother. If you are reading this, you are seeing me at my most vulnerable. I embrace vulnerability; it keeps me grounded and it keeps me going.
I am grateful. I am privileged. I will not let it go to waste.
Always miss you, Mom.
Kveer, signing out.
