STITCH – The Teenage Street Tailor

With fabric in hand for my bicycle bag, I went to the “tailors” section of the market in Bangalore. Outside in the street – sitting in the hot sun – was a young man, a teenager. He fixes ripped backpacks, torn jeans and damaged shirts – common everyday tears.

His grandfather is also a tailor. Grandfather has a shop across the street, inside a small, modern-ish building, at the end of a dimly neon-lit pedestrian passageway. Grandfather also repairs bags, but has a more powerful, electric-driven, machine. Don’t mess around with Grandpa’s machine! Behind him is a junky stack of old backpacks, lost luggage and other discarded, sewable goods. He must have collected them over a lifetime, taking them in from the neighborhood. Perhaps someone brought a damaged bag in and never collected it. Perhaps he found one on the street and brought it back to fix and then re-sell it.

In a few hours, grandfather fixed me up a new bicycle bag, and I was ready to go.

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