I am so proud to be a women and proud to be mother of a daughter. Hi I am Aaliya, I was born 10th March 1991 in Mumbai. We are 5 sisters and I am the eldest one. Generally the society that we belong to girls is not equally valued as boys, I myself have seen this biasness where boys are far more valued than girls and their preference is always kept on priority, I literally have saw and felt this because this used to be done in our neighborhood and at our natives in our uncle’s and aunt’s houses. I am really proud of my father as he has never made us feel any lesser than a boy, he belonged to labor class and hardly had any sources of good income still he decided to give us good education and liberal upbringing. Although, we were going to government schools he also sent us to tuitions so that we get best education. He worked really hard to fulfill house hold needs and our fees and encouraged us to move forward in life and planned bright future for us. One day my parents decided to divide the responsibilities, my mother decided to stay at home and help us and my father decided to go out and have sufficient earnings to keep the house hold run smoothly, my mother told me this when I was 15 years old and I still remember that day as I used to always wonder why my father comes so late and leaves to early in the morning often he seemed to be very tired. The time passed and we grew up, the culture changed became more liberal still my parents were often reminded by relatives and other people the disadvantages of not having a son. I saw that disappointment often in my parents eyes however, they never expressed any of their disappointments to us. Being the eldest child I could feel their situation as my father was growing old and he was losing hope and strength. I had just finished school and wanted to study further in a good college to fulfill my parent’s dream of us getting good education but at the same time I did not want to become burden on my father so I decided to bear my college fees and other expenses by doing a part time job. My personal interest was in arts and crafts, from a very young age and used to make various shaped with paper, in school I used learned to draw sketches from my teacher who was expert in origami and sketches. When I joined college I wanted to do course in fashion designing however, due to college and job I could not do it at that time. Even today at some regions in our country girls are not given freedom to go out and fulfill their dreams, they are considered as temporary member of the family as they are meant to shift with in-laws after marriage so from their childhood they get trained to focus more on house chores than their careers. I always had a question in my mind that after completing the education if I will have to get married then I will be unable to achieve what my parents wanted for us. After finishing college my parents wanted me to get married soon as I was the eldest daughter and there was a society pressure on them to do the same. It was the first time when I disagreed with them because I had decided that I will not be part of contradicted tradition of the society where parents are encouraged to provide good education to girl child however; the in laws are benefitted with her careers. My father had worked so hard heated summer, chilled winter and stormy rains and I wanted to do my bit to make him feel free from all responsibilities. I worked in various companies part time and full time to explore outside world gain knowledge, simultaneously I completed fashion designing course. I worked for 4 years and saved some money and I used to frequently visit various markets to see collection of various handicraft items and learn about their origins, the ways they were made and who had made them. One day while coming home from the market, I had an intuition that now is the time that I do something of my own. I reached home and started planning how I can promote Indian art and textile. I discussed this with my neighbor and best friend who also shared similar interest. We did research about how we can get products directly from the artists and add value to them and promote their creations. After 2 months we launched Alphabey. It’s been 4 years now, we had started with a team of 3 and so far we are strength of 13 artisan women. We all are really happy to make these craft and show the world how beautiful Indian art is. I am thankful to Global artisan to give Alphabey this opportunity to showcase our products on their platform. Alphabey is continuously trying to include more talented artisans from all across Indian. I believe that if you have courage to stand against meaningless traditions of the society then sooner or later with your talent and hard work you can prove them wrong. Thanks, Aaliya Khan