Her Mother Taught Her to Weave. Now Iaishah Rymbai Runs a Private Company with Her Children.

My name is Iaishah Rymbai, and I am from Ri Bhoi district in Meghalaya. I learned to weave from my mother.

We all did — my siblings and I. She wove alongside us as we grew up. We went to school, but we also wove at home. The two things were never in conflict. Weaving was simply part of our lives, like eating, like sleeping.

My mother worked in eri silk weaving, and so we weave eri silk. I began this formally as a business in 2019. In 2022, we registered as a private company.

It takes three to four days to weave a single stole — the process is long, and that is not something we apologise for. What makes our work distinctive is that we control the entire process: we raise our own eri worms, harvest our own cocoons, and produce our own threads. We do not depend on outside suppliers for raw material. We also use organic dyes — that is, perhaps, the most unique thing about what we make. The colour comes from nature, and it stays.

All my children are part of this work now. The business has grown into something that belongs to the whole family. The market can be difficult — demand fluctuates, and you have to weave according to what people want at a given time, not just what you feel like creating. But the craft is ours, the process is ours, and that is not something easily taken away.