Meera’s Story: From Uncertainty to the Wheel

When Meera first came to us, she spoke barely above a whisper. She had spent years in informal day-work that paid almost nothing and promised even less. “I didn’t think I was good at anything,” she told us later. “Nobody had ever given me the chance to find out.”

She started, like everyone, with the basics — wedging clay until her arms ached, learning to centre it on the wheel. For weeks the clay fought her. Then one afternoon it didn’t. The wall rose smooth and even under her fingers, and she laughed out loud. That mug still sits on a shelf in the studio.

Meera now throws mugs and small bowls to a standard that takes most people years to reach. With her first steady wages she moved her family somewhere with clean water and enrolled her daughter in school. “I want her to grow up,” she says, “knowing that her mother makes beautiful things.”