It is winter. This year it is especially cold. The snows have come early to our valley. I love the summer months when the valley is in bloom. The lake is a carpet of my favorite flower, the lotus.

During the winter my family stays on a houseboat owned by my grandfather. He lets it out to tourists in the summer. During the summer we live above my father’s shop. We sell embroidered work and sari printed work to the tourists and the dealers from Mumbai and other metropolitan cities.

It is during the winter that we prepare the items for sale. I sat `we;’ because every member of my family works at the family business. Sathesh, my eldest brother is very skilled with the wool cap and swatter weaving needle. He does beautiful crewel work too. I am still learning the different stitches. Often I side idle, dreaming of the warm summer months and the strong and lovely lotus. I love to nibble the seeds of the lotus and my mother prepares a tasty dish from the stem. We farm the lotus on the lake and try it for the winter months! I don’t mind doing the embroidery but what I would really enjoy best is to design the various patterns. I know that I can do this well. I see lovely colors and shapes in my mind’s eye. Most of all I see the lotus, its many shades of pinky-yellow.

I have not introduced my self o for. My name is Sharadi. I am to be ten year old. I have been secretly working on a design for my birthday dress, a phirin. That’s a sketch of me at the top of the page. I am holding a lotus in my hand. You can see a bit of the lake on which we have our house boat. The hills are in the distance.

Only my mother knows what I do. Should I show my work to my father Or Sathesh? Will they think I am jus a little girl? Oh dear, I am so mixed up!

Well! You will never believe what happened today. We were sitting in our family room, as usual. Mother was cooking. Sathesh was working on a bedspread and I was looking out of the window and dreaming. And then quite by accident Sathesh discovered the design I was working on. He was really excited about it. He says I am gifted. Perhaps my father will send me to a place I can learnt art properly. Who knows?

For the moment I am really happy that my family members are all so produced of me. So I am quite content to work away at my patterns openly and dream of the future, I am never bored.

My birth day phirin is a lovely shade of turquoise blue and it will be covered with my special design. Yes, you must have guessed. It is the lotus.

I can see why the lotus is our country’s national flower. It is perfect in every way, strong and beautiful and it will bloom again when peace returns.