![\"Reclaiming](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-132264166,imgsize-441018,width-400,height-225,resizemode-75\/1.jpg\" "\\"One")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nGurmeet Kaur, 26, is dressed in a phulkari kurta she designed herself, jhumkas, clear block heels and aviator-style glasses. Just before the camera comes up, she pauses. \u201cWait,\u201d she says, taking off the glasses before posing.For Gurmeet, who comes from a village near Nabha in Punjab, the moment is more than a photograph. She is among the women artisans associated with The Nabha Foundation who brought hand-embroidered phulkari to the foundation\u2019s recent two-week exhibition at The Kunj.<\/p>\n Gurmeet Kaur, a master phulkari artisan with Nabha Foundation, at the exhibition at The Kunj. (Pics: Asmitaa Aggaarwal)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Gurmeet Kaur, who is a master phulkari artisan with Nabha Foundation, is also making a phulkari for her own wedding. It carries the things that \u201cspeak\u201d to her: lassi glasses, the word \u201cPunjaban\u201d embroidered in Gurmukhi script, and a man on the moon hoisting a flag. \u201cIt has taken me two years, but it is still a work in progress,\u201d she says. She does not expect to inherit a phulkari from her mother or grandmother. So this one, she says, will be \u201ca gift to myself\u201d\u201cThis phone, my scooter \u2013 I bought them with my embroidery earnings. I also paid for my Master\u2019s in political science from Punjabi University, Patiala,\u201d says Gurmeet, who has been learning the craft for 12 years while pursuing her studies. She is now a master trainer and says she earns up to `15,000 a month \u2013 about as much as her brother. The income, she says, has won her a \u201clittle respect\u201d at home. \u201cThey allowed me to come to Delhi. I am so excited to be here at The Kunj to showcase Nabha phulkari. I also got to see the city, which I would never have been able to do otherwise. My parents are very conservative. Most girls in my village cannot dream of this,\u201d she says.Displayed around her are antique baghs (wraps or shawls with intricate phulkari embroidery on khaddar), sourced from artisan families in Punjab. Traditionally gifted to girls as shagun at the time of marriage, these densely embroidered textiles were often part of a woman\u2019s trousseau, made by the older women in the family, laden with stories. \u201cA bagh takes three months to make, sometimes even more,\u201d says Vimmi Lekhi from the foundation. \u201cThe beauty of this craft is that it is still done the way our great-grandmothers did it – as a community bonding exercise.\u201dRajvinder Kaur, 44, who has been embroidering for 15 years, says the artisans do not always erase irregularities. If a pattern goes slightly awry, it is allowed to remain \u2013 as a celebration of imperfection. A tiny geometric motif can take her nearly half an hour \u2013 a useful measure of the patience behind an intricately embroidered bagh.<\/p>\n![\"2\"](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/msid-132264251\/2.jpg\" "\\"Gurmeet")
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![\"3\"](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/msid-132264288\/3.jpg\" "\\"Rajvinder")
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