Every morning in Tamil Nadu’s Kakapalayam, near Salem, 84-year-old Chinnusami sits down at his loom. The wooden frame is old, and so is his body. His hands tremble now, and the threads do not always move the way they once did.

Family members often ask him to rest. They remind him that he has worked enough, and that at his age, he should slow down. But he refuses. For over 60 years, weaving has shaped his days, and even now, he cannot imagine walking away from it.

“As long as our limbs are functional and our mind is working, we should be at work,” he says. “We should rest, yes. But we should not give up on what we love. Age is just a number.”

For decades, this quiet determination remained unseen outside his village. 

Today, however, sarees woven in his modest home are reaching customers across India and abroad, thanks to his 23-year-old grandson, Praveen, a final-year BSc Chemistry student, who decided that his grandfather’s skill deserved far more recognition than it had ever received.

A father’s losses, and the craft that kept him going 

Before weaving became central to his life, Chinnusami was an agriculturalist. He owned land and believed education would secure a better future for his children.

So he sold everything he had to ensure his three sons could study. But life unfolded differently than he had imagined. Two of his sons went missing when they were still young — one in his early twenties and the other a teenager. The family searched for years, filed police complaints, and waited. They never returned.

Through all of this, weaving became his constant. On days filled with worry, waiting, and unanswered questions, he would return to the loom. The work did not take away the pain, but it gave him something to hold on to. 

Praveen grew up hearing these stories. Although he did not spend much of his childhood with his grandfather, the stories stayed with him — the sacrifices he made, the hardships he endured, and the quiet dignity with which he carried himself.

Over time, Praveen began to feel that a man who had spent his entire life giving to others should not fade into obscurity.

‘I’m not educated, but I have this skill’

Chinnusami learned weaving as a young boy from a local artisan, someone whose name he no longer remembers. What began as a way to survive gradually became his identity.

“I am not educated,” he says simply. “But I have this skill.”

Like many weavers across Salem, however, skill did not always translate into fair earnings. Even after spending days on one saree, artisans were often paid only a........

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