No breakfast in this world beats a hot mirchi bada from the thela near Sardar Market with kadak chai. I've eaten it for thirty years and my heart still does a little dance. Come to Jodhpur hungry, jao pet bhar ke.

I started teaching four mohalla kids to carve wooden blocks on Sundays, no fee. Two of them already carve cleaner lines than I did at their age. If this craft is going to survive me, it will be through their small hands, not my worry.

cheap 'handmade' scarves

Bought a so-called handblock scarf from a tourist shop to check the competition. It was a screen print pretending to be my life's work, and the dye bled in one wash. If the pattern is too perfect and the price too low, someone somewhere got cheated, usually the maker.

People ask why handmade costs more than a machine print. Behen, each block is carved by hand, dipped, aligned by eye, dried in the sun — one dupatta can take my whole family a day. I'm not selling cloth, I'm selling somebody's saved-up morning.

salaam from the blue lanes

Salaam, I print cloth by hand in a workshop where my dada printed before me, in Jodhpur's old city. My English is thoda toota-phoota so forgive me, but my chai is always ready. Aa gaye ho toh baith ke jao.