The Girl Behind the Hook

I was born on the 25th of May, 2012, in Delhi. My mum says the monsoon was late that year and the city was sweltering, but the hospital room was cool and quiet, and I came into the world without making a sound. She always jokes that I was already thinking about something.

Delhi was loud and colourful and chaotic and I loved every second of it. Our flat had a tiny balcony where my mum kept jasmine plants, and I used to sit there with a sketchbook, drawing everything I could see — the auto-rickshaws, the kite sellers, the pigeons fighting over someone's leftover roti. I went to Delhi Public School, and I was maybe four or five when I already knew that making things with my hands was my favourite feeling in the world.

Then we moved to Bangalore when I was about two. I don't remember much of it honestly — just flashes. Tall trees, the smell of rain and coffee, a house with more space than our Delhi flat. But we moved back to Delhi in 2016, and that felt like coming home. The noise, the energy, the chaat vendors on every corner — I'd missed all of it.

Two years later, in 2018, we moved again — this time to Gurgaon. It was different from Delhi. Shinier, quieter, full of these massive glass buildings. But our neighbourhood had its own charm — kids playing cricket in the parking lot, street food stalls, and that same feeling of community. I settled in quickly because by then I'd learned that home isn't really a place. It's wherever your people are.

I've always been the artistic kid. Not the sporty one, not the loud one — the one sitting in the corner with paint on her fingers and a head full of ideas. At Delhi Public School, when other kids were playing during break, I'd be sketching faces in my notebook or folding paper into little animals. My art teacher once told my mum, 'She doesn't draw what she sees. She draws what she feels.' I thought that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about me.

Drawing came first. Then painting — watercolours mostly, because I loved how the colours bled into each other and made something unexpected. Then I discovered the harmonium. My grandmother had one, old and creaky, and when I pressed the keys and pumped the bellows, it made this deep, breathing sound that felt alive. I taught myself to play simple ragas, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and the music made my whole body calm.

Sketching, painting, harmonium, paper folding, clay modelling — I tried everything. But when I picked up a crochet hook for the first time, something clicked. Not clicked like 'oh this is nice.' Clicked like 'oh. THIS is what I've been looking for.' It was like all those years of making things with my hands had been practice for this one craft.

I'm thirteen now. I live in Gurgaon with my family. I go to school, I do homework, I argue with my brother Kabir about whose turn it is to choose what we watch. Normal kid stuff. But in the evenings, when the house gets quiet and the light turns golden, I sit on my bed with my hook and my yarn, and I make things that didn't exist before I made them. And every single time, it feels like magic.

That's who I am. A girl born in Delhi, who's lived in Bangalore, come back to Delhi, and landed in Gurgaon — who can't stop making things, who believes that beautiful objects should be made slowly, with love, by hand. That's Kaira.