When I started out exploring this new venture, I wasn’t sure how to address it. Was it a venture, a business, a social cooperative, a project, an enterprise? I’m not particularly fond of calling it a business as calling it that would mean I’d be doing it solely for making profits which isn’t the case. My objective is to introduce Manipuri textiles to a wider audience and the income earned will be shared amongst the weavers who create them so that they can directly see how their work is being appreciated and perhaps it may egg them to preserve their craft and revive it too. Weaving is a legacy that has been passed on generation after the next by the women of Manipur and I do hope and pray that we can continue this craft for it is unique and beautiful like none other.

I came across the word profit-sharing enterprise and I think I shall use this term for it reflects my ideologies and aspirations too. The economic gains will be shared so that the weavers may better their lives and be able to send their children to colleges and better schools and they don’t have to think twice before buying vegetables and fish from the local bazaar!

And hence my profit sharing venture has found its etymological home. Now just to finalise the name… hmmm..