Hubli Man Turns to Knitting After His Mother’s Death, Builds a Business in the Process

On most days, Sohail Nargund’s hands move faster than his thoughts. The steady knots of two needles clicking together have become a kind of rhythm — one he rebuilt for himself after life took away the one person who held his world together.

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Sohail lost his mother six years ago. The grief was sharp at first, then painfully dull — the kind that lingers, reshapes, and quietly steals your sense of direction. “I felt lost and numb for years,” he says. And when the lockdown arrived, the pressure of work and isolation only deepened that heaviness. Anxiety became a constant companion.

Knitting as a lifeline

Knitting did not begin as a solution. It started as something small, a simple attempt to keep his hands engaged when his mind felt crowded.

“Initially, it was very difficult, but I did not give up,” Sohail recalls. Day after day, stitch after shaky stitch, he kept returning to the needles. Slowly, the yarn began to guide him. Somewhere in that gentle repetition, he realised he felt most at peace when he was knitting.

A small push,  a new beginning

Then, one moment changed his journey. A friend insisted on buying a sweater he had hand-knit. Sohail quoted Rs 900. She refused — and paid him Rs 1,700 instead.

“That made me realise the value of handcrafted things,” he says.

With encouragement from friends and family, Sohail started sharing his work online as @the_rough_hand_knitter, turning a private coping mechanism into a small business in Karnataka’s Hubli.

Breaking norms with every stitch

Today, nothing makes him happier than seeing people wear his creations. There is also a lighter, unexpected joy in the look of surprise when people learn that he knits.

“Knitting is still seen as a feminine activity. I want to change that,” he says. “I want people to follow their heart, not stereotypes.”

Sohail’s journey is a reminder that healing rarely arrives as a grand gesture. Sometimes it comes as two wooden needles, a ball of yarn, and the courage to begin again. In every sweater he knits, he threads resilience, love, and a quiet rebellion — proving that joy, like craft, can be remade by hand.