Now that we had found the village, our first stop was at a small tea shop where we could sit and call the Kantha embroidery artisan Afrunessa Begum for her address. We tried her number again, but much to our devastation, the call went unanswered yet again. Feeling a little panicked, we asked the tea shop owner,
“Do you know Afrunessa Begumji?”
“Who? What?”
“She is an artist who works on Kantha work.”
“Kantha? What is that?”
“It is a type of stitching-embroidery”
“Oh. Yes, I know her. She lives there”, he said, pointing to a white and blue building in the distance.
It suddenly struck me how different local knowledge and language is to the local community. For the world, Afrunessa Begum is an expert in the famous Kantha work— a product which has received the Geographical Indications certification from the Government of India. But for the local community, everything is simple. It is just silai-kadayi ka kaam.