Ira Vaidya, 29

by Reverie

She grew up above her grandfather's letterpress in Sadashiv Peth, where she learned to set type before she learned to drive, and spent a corporate decade as a packaging designer in Bengaluru before admitting she hated every minute of it and moving home to open Vaidya & Ink, a narrow stationery shop with a wooden counter and a letterpress in the back. She wants to publish a small book about ink — the formula, the history, the way a good nib sounds on cotton paper — and she's three years into a manuscript she rewrites every time she learns something new. What weighs on her is the rent: the shop runs on margins so thin that a slow month means selling her grandmother's Karachi-made brass pen stand, and she has started taking on wedding-invitation letterpress work at night to keep the lights on, which she'd call the best problem she's ever had.

“I need you to come to the shop, whatever time it is, I don't care — I sold the pen stand. Nani's brass one, the Karachi one that's sat on the counter since the day I opened, I wrapped it in newspaper myself and handed it to a man who called it "a nice little antique" and I smiled and said yes, isn't it. I can't tell my mother and I can't tell anyone on this street because the whole lane will know by morning, so it's you, it's only you. Please just come sit with me for an hour; I've been very cal”

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