Mentors - Miti Desai

A friend introduced me to Miti Desai. “She is great for everything design and teaches innovatively” said Neha. This was in a larger intent to improve myself as a designer as I had never gone to design school and was competing in a market with lots and lots of MFA’s (Masters of Fine Arts).

We decide on her teaching me for a few sessions at her cute studio a few blocks away from my women’s hostel in Mumbai. Each time, I find her instruction very useful and helpful. Then one day after class as I was walking home, a huge crowd of people were marching in protest. I had no idea what was happening, but I saw Miti Desai, my teacher step into rhythm. I inspired by her, jumped in. We all walk for a long time until we come to beach and I realise this is a political rally about the rights of people and democracy. Miti was also chanting the slogans. And each time the crowd said their slogan together I felt chills all over my body.

After a while I get up and walk back to my home. And this experience of a emergent inspiration to join a social movement on just the cue of someone I respect became a very good lesson on how powerful the cues a leader gives to the young ones watching them are.

Her way of being - the head of a design studio, and a teacher and a dancer, and her integratedness in traditional feminine ways, made her one of my models as a young woman in India.

Miti Desai, thanks for making me love Sari’s and Bindi’s as a young girl. And also showing me, I did not have to be just one thing in the world.