Asif Shaikh: The embroidery-wala, who took on the mighty designer

Slowly but surely Asif's crusade has found more resonance with the designer community

Sometimes a weakness can turn into your biggest strength. A physically weak child with low immunity, Asif Shaikh couldn’t get up to the normal games children played in his colony and often spent hours in his Ahmedabad home balcony watching other children while cursing his own fate.

But as he sat there, he also noticed the birds and butterflies and the beauty of the world around him and at the age of 7, Shaikh began to embroider on his own. He says his innermost desire was to “fly like the butterflies he saw” but he managed to give wings to