From RAGS to stitches ... all for a cause

Some things you pick up very quickly about Tasleem Karmali, seamstress, recycler, teacher, wife, mother, child psychologist and founder of RAGS — Recycle Sew Serve Project.

One, she won’t let you get a word in edgewise if you don’t interrupt. So you very quickly accustom yourself to being rude, and nip every second sentence in the bud. Two, she has an ability to effortlessly recall dates, numbers, events, details.

On September 1, 1984, she remembers joining the Indian High School as a psychology teacher for the 11^th and 12^th standard. She knows the date she saw her husband, Riaz, the day he first put his arm around her, the four days later when she was engaged, the eight days later that she was married, the date they landed in Dubai from Bombay — “been here 30 years after marriage in ‘83”. She recalls a Pfaff sewing machine once upon a time cost Dh1,250 (“now it must be at least 3k… if not more”) and that to sew the clothes, she busies herself sewing, noting that she has used 144 yards of elastic in a year. Three, she doesn’t ail from modesty: “I’m a leader, an Aries,” says the April 8 born, who sat on her first pedal sewing machine at the age of 18: “My aunt in Mumbai used to sew for me… but then she got married and went away…”.

She remembers how her heart broke when she went visiting the families of slum kids in Mumbai, and was told by a poverty-stricken mother of a special needs child that she fed him only sugar-water the first year of his birth. At this memory, she wiped away a tear.

It’s easy to see Karmali being a favourite of kids in school. “Miss…! Miss…!” The children, in her building in Oud Metha, plague her for clothes and she’s happy to oblige. “I love sewing. Even on Eid, I always did dresses for the children…” she adds.

Friends, owners of boutiques, well wishers, all pitch in and help out anyway they can – Riaz manages her email, and back home for lunch before setting out again to deal with the world of cargo and shipping, he quietly says: “She does a lot of charity.”

Her airy two-bedroom flat, brimming with yukka and aloe and money plants, is teeming with scraps of every material; satins, chiffons, crepes and organzas being trickier to needle through as compared to the good old cotton fabric.

Come Saturday, and 50 children, aged between 9 and 12, at the Dubai Gem Private School, will walk the runway to celebrate 40 years of the school, where both daughters of Tasleem and Riaz studied. The money raised will go to the Dubai Autism centre.

The fashion models, students of the school, have already bought dresses Tasleem has sewn. And at Dh50 each, a guaranteed total of Dh2,700 will be donated after the walk, to an official of the Autism centre. Can you place orders for the clothes she stitches? No, but you can be there, model her clothes and buy them there and be at ease for having done your bit to help children with special needs.

nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE