Kangleimaichou

I was to write ballads For the love  That was never mine Below the full moon In silent nights  Claimed by jasmine scent Kept awake by breeze But before I could sing Before I could ask She left without a trace, Leaving, without knowing, The unsung words  The moon, a crescent  Nights stilled, scentless. When the words Turned relics  The ballads  Fond memories Fetching faint smiles The heart  Already healed We met again  Wiser and seasoned She had lived  Her miseries  I had mine  All under one roof If not in love As least in grief:  A sibling never found Children orphaned  Parents aged in grief Hopes sunk Love trampled  Bestiality at large If the ballads had failed At Least in grief We are united.

With four production facilities spread in and around Bangalore, Aquarelle India offers products in 100% cotton, pure linens and blends, and viscose blends, along with recycled, organic, and BCI products on sustainability lines, along with traceability details as to its raw-material source. According to its sustainability division head, Ravi Patil, "On sustainability, we are on par with the customers, and are also aligned with them as well as with the CIEL target. So sustainability is our key DNA."  As concerns over climate action pile up, calls for businesses in the fashion industry, one of the major polluters, to do more continue to grow louder. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the industry is the second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. However, many have responded by adopting an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework to a...

Many years before Hidesign was founded, Dilip Kapur was a big part of the ‘incredible idealism of changing the world’ that swept across many parts of the world in the 60s and 70s when he was in the US, where he lived for 15 years. When he returned to Puducherry’s Auroville in India, it was with a desire to recreate that world. “Then there was nothing. It was barren land. I was in a one-room house with no running water. There was a hand pump if we needed water,” he recalls. He started creating bags as a hobby, a craft that he had learned when he was finishing PHD at the University of Denver, School of International Studies in International Affairs. “I needed a job and had applied at many places, and joined a business. At this factory, I was trained in leather work.” Little did he know that a couple of decades later, this hobby would translate into one of the most successful homegrown luxury bag brands in India. Forty-five years after it was founded, major leather goods br...

Singapore-based ViSenze offers an AI-powered visual commerce platform that enables shoppers to search for products by using image instead of keywords. It counts Urban Outfitters, Meesho, Myntra, Zalora, and Rakuten, among its stable of customers. Started in 2012, ViSenze says it processes over a billion queries a month from retailers, supporting them in-store and on e-commerce sites. Use cases range from enhanced visual search, product tagging, smart product recommendations, and retail analytics. The Mission Most shoppers know exactly what they are looking for but have a hard time finding it using keywords, and often the recommendations are an overwhelming selection of unrelated products. To solve this, Oliver Tan, Co-Founder & CEO, ViSenze decided to launch his company with the mission of making finding products easier with smart AI. Working on deep learning and computer vision, the company decided to create a breakthrough technology solution for retailers that is po...

Sumita Mehta, a well-paid government employee, always wanted to own a stylish and good-quality tote for daily use and a clutch for social gatherings. However, browsing a prominent market like Delhi’s Sarojini market for the bags she desired was both difficult and time-consuming; trusting her instincts and limited product knowledge, she occasionally purchased the right products; otherwise, it was pure disappointment. This was then, long before the Indian economy was liberalized. Her daughter’s generation can now freely choose from a diverse product range offered by multiple brands. Unlike Mehta, today people no longer have to travel to major shopping destinations in other countries to buy high-end products as they are present in most Indian metros. According to a report by Research and Markets, the handbags market in India is poised to grow by $207.51mn during 2022–2026, progressing at a CAGR of 4.90% during the forecast period. The Indian handbag market, segmented as clut...

Last December, when Delhi breathed comparatively less polluted air, the Yamuna, often referred to as the capital’s lifeline, experienced the ecological assault of sewage and industrial effluents. A government report indicated that the pollutant load in the river had increased substantially over the last five years. Then, like any other year, in the soft mountains of pink candy foam rising from the grey surface of the river, devotees gathered to dip to mark Chhaath puja. Every year, the Delhi government shuts down supplies of sizeable water treatment plants because the level of ammonia generated by industrial waste becomes higher than what they can treat. Last year, for more than 33 days, the level of ammonia in water remained above treatable levels, impacting over a third of Delhi’s water supply. The toxic foam that engulfs the river for large parts of the year is linked to the phosphate content of detergents in the wastewater of cloth manufacturing units. Several such u...

  With the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions around the end of the previous year, 2022 started with an inherited mixture of anxiety, hope and vigour to revive and reclaim the pre-COVID-19 normalcy.  When asked what he would do next, a publisher friend, who had been infected twice with COVID and his print publication shut for two years, said, “Publishing is the only thing I know, and this means I have to pull in everything to re-launch the publication at any cost.” Such was the state of mind prevalent across businesses and the working force battered by the pandemic. Similarly, the fashion industry started the year on the same note. Long-shuttered businesses finally opened, dusted and became operational, yet many never returned. Masked customers, who had been shopping online, trickled into stores operated by masked staff.  After experiencing 18 months from early 2021 through mid-2022 of growth, it faced a challenging time again. Persistent inflation an...