Animals in Thread, Stories on Paper – Indha’s Quiet Love Affair with the Wild

Some loves move through our lives on four legs and never really go away. This piece is for all my dogs and puppies – the ones who wait at the gate, follow me from room to room, sense my mood faster than any human, and quietly repair the worst days just by being there. Their love has been a steady background music for almost two decades, something I can’t fully explain, only feel.

From that love, Indha’s love for animal motifs slowly grew. At first, it was just the dog who kept slipping into designs. Then the rest of the animal kingdom started arriving on our table. A calm cow embroidered on a magazine holder, a tiny frog sitting at the corner, as if guarding someone’s reading time. Birds showed up next – peacocks and pea hens from our Purulia centre, robins and kingfishers that I often spot in my own garden. On some days, an octopus or a fish quietly swims into our artwork; on others, a horse stands tall in thread, full of quiet strength.

One of my favourites is a series where our women have created deer moving through a forest – sometimes in fine embroidery, sometimes in hand painting that reminds you of Gond art. The trees are simple, the lines are gentle, but there is a sense of a whole jungle breathing behind that one image. It feels like a small window into a larger world that we so easily forget in our rush.

All of this ends up on Indha’s handmade range – diaries, journals, folders, bags, magazine holders, home decor. Khadi cotton, recycled paper, upcycled materials and human hands come together to create something that is not “perfect” in the factory sense, but feels alive. When you hold a diary with a dog or a deer on the cover, or slide magazines into a holder with a cow and a frog on it, you are not just organising your life. You are, in a very small way, acknowledging that we share this planet with many other beings.

For me, connecting creatures to our craft is pure joy. It turns design into a reminder: we coexist. The animals on our products are not decoration; they are gentle nudges to look up from our screens, to remember the garden, the forest, the village road, the riverbank. To remember that the planet is not a backdrop, it is home – for all of us.

Indha’s handmade work, in that sense, has become a higher cause in my heart. Each stitch and brushstroke is a little conversation between human creativity and the living world. And if, through a diary on someone’s desk or a magazine holder in someone’s living room, that conversation reaches a few more people, then our animals in thread and paint have done their job.