tailor

After losing his sister to poverty, Selvakumar — known as ‘Tailor Bro’ — began training women in tailoring for just Re 1. Over 18 years, he has empowered 4.6 lakh women across Tamil Nadu, while over 40 lakh more are learning through his YouTube channel, which helps women train and earn from home.

Started as a lockdown project to help the women members of a local self help group in Kodaikanal, Smriti Lamech and her teams makes rag dolls that honour feminist icons like Kalpana Chawla, Savitribai Phule, Frida Kahlo and more.

One of Arun’s most challenging portrait was that of Lord Krishna’s portrait, which took him three years to complete, and is currently priced at a whopping one crore!

While the family was dependent for food on the government subsidised ration through Public Distribution System, their annual income was a merely Rs 50,000.

Even after starting his small business, he came across a few people who were sceptical about his skills at first.

How many times have we gone to the tailor in our neighbourhood to get uniforms stitched just before school reopened, or something fancy for the birthday or festival coming up? Though it now sounds like a bygone era to most of us, these tailors are still around, still looking to make a living, in a world they probably can't stitch together anymore.