Everyone wants to build the next great thing. Very few people are willing to do the slow, invisible, unglamorous work that makes great things possible. This is the letter I wish I had received twenty years ago.
The art of dressing is one of the oldest human practices of meaning-making. What we choose to put on our bodies is an act of communication, of identity, of values — far more profound than fashion culture would have us believe. And in the age of fast fashion, sustainable aesthetics, and the Indian handloom renaissance, this conversation has never been more urgent.
I have been building institutions for most of my adult life — a classical arts school, a wellness practice, a foundation, a handloom label. What I have learned in that process is that institution-building is the most demanding, most invisible, and most consequential form of creative practice available.
We have confused joy with pleasure, happiness with the absence of pain, and wellbeing with the management of symptoms. The result is a civilisation in which most people are comfortable and very few people are alive. What if joy were a discipline?