Shama Pawar’s (@shama_pawar) first trip to #Hampi was a gift from her father. What the painter didn’t know then was that she had walked into a dreamland that would, eventually, not let her walk away. “My father wanted me to see Hampi, and he had insisted that I reach the place at night. He wanted the land to be ‘revealed’ to me only at sunrise. But I reached just before dawn, so I sat on a hilltop and waited for the sun to come up. The memory of that sunrise, when the massive boulders all around me and the pristine waters of the Tungabhadra were bathed in golden light, shall remain etched in my heart forever. It was that light that changed my life.” Four years later, in 1995, Pawar and her artist husband Adam Shapiro moved permanently into the fortified village of Anegundi to build their home in Hampi. In 1997, she established the Kishkinda Trust, a social development organization that aims to secure the fut­ure of village communities through creative economies thriving on locally available resources. For Pawar, what was originally meant to be a two­-day trip to Hampi seeded a lifelong mission to conserve heritage architecture, protect craft traditions, and generate livelihoods for villagers through multiple sustainable initiatives. As of now, there are over 700 artisans associated with the Kishkinda Trust and several production units under its aegis where banana fibres and water hyacinths are wrought into objects of utility and joy. Towards the end of last year, women artisans got together to make a mam­moth banana fibre reception backdrop commissioned by Hyatt Place Hampi. The project took over a month to come together and reflects not just the beauty of handwork but also the inestimable riches of human collaboration. Explore the home at the link in bio Photography: @orangeandteal.in Words: @blackseptembre