Anu's Blog

A unique salesman

Posted: April 2012

My husband Matt and I traveled to India in February of this year to visit my family and meet with our suppliers. We got introduced to another Fair Trade supplier called MESH (Maximising Employment to Serve the Handicapped). Mesh supports a network of crafts projects all across India. These projects are run for artisans with a disability or with leprosy affected people.

The handcrafted products we saw and purchased are testament to the wonderful opportunities being provided through these projects.

Both Matt and myself were stirred by the sales assistant Rohit at Mesh’s Delhi outlet. Rohit has Celebral Palsy and he has speech and movement disability. However that did not stop Rohit from enthusiastically showing us Mesh’s products and making sure I pick most of the colours and styles for bags, sarongs, bedspreads and jewellery that I had showed interest in.

Once we had collected all the items, the Billing man came to the desk and started making our bill item by item. Rohit helped in counting and reading prices from the tags. We had found two beautiful kids bedcovers that we wanted to buy. For some reason the Billing man wanted to give discount on those two pieces to us, but Rohit didn’t want to. It was really funny to see him communicate with a little unhappiness. The man explained to Rohit why he wanted to reduce the price. Those two bedcovers came with a matching cushion but they had run out of cushions. And the price on the tag included the cushion. I was really moved by the childlike approach from Rohit and the honesty of Mesh.

Our trip to Mesh has been engraved in our memories and we can’t wait for our next visit.