Our mission

Every one of us knows a house where the woman is holding everything together on her own. A husband gone. A husband present but lost to something. Children who need school fees this month, and a mother who cannot say out loud that there is no money for them.

She will not ask. That is the part that keeps you awake. She will sell her bangles, she will borrow from a neighbour she cannot repay, she will send the children to bed early so nobody notices there was no dinner — but she will not ask, because asking costs the one thing she has left.

Meri Baji exists so that she does not have to ask like that.

Why the name

In our homes, baji is not a title. It is the sister you go to when you cannot go to anyone else. She does not lecture you. She does not tell the neighbourhood. She feeds you first and asks questions later, and you leave her house feeling like a person again.

That is the whole idea. Not an office with a form. A door you can knock on without lowering your eyes.

Half of every rupee of profit

Half of what this business earns goes to that work. Not half of what you pay us — half of what is left after the spice, the packing and the courier are paid for. That is the honest number, and we would rather write the honest one than the impressive one.

The other half goes back into the shop. That is not a lesser purpose. A business that does not grow cannot help anyone next year, and a promise that runs out of money is worse than a promise never made.

So when you buy a packet of haldi, you are not donating. You are buying good spice at a fair price — and half of what we make from it goes where it is needed.

Not charity — a chance

Money handed over once solves this month and nothing else. Next month the same woman is at the same door, a little smaller than she was before. We do not want to build that.

What we want to build is this: she learns something, she works, she earns, she saves, and one day she employs someone else. Skill, then work, then income, then standing on her own feet. Charity ends the day the money stops. A skill does not.

So the help we give is aimed at that road — training, tools, a first order to fill, school fees for the children so the next generation starts further ahead than this one did. Medical help where it is genuinely needed, through proper doctors, not our own guesses.

For women, especially

Most of the women we have in mind cannot take a job across town. Some because of children. Some because of what the family will say. Some because it is genuinely not safe.

None of that means she cannot earn. Packing, weighing, quality checking, stitching, cooking, teaching, handwork — there is honest income in all of it, from her own home or from a place where she is treated with respect and comes home before dark.

Four walls should not be the boundary of what a woman is allowed to become.

No sifarish. No favours. No exceptions.

This is the rule we will be strictest about, because it is the rule that everything else depends on.

Nobody is helped here because they know someone. Not a relative, not a friend of a friend, not because a respected person made a phone call. The person who needs help comes themselves and speaks for themselves, and the decision is made on need and on merit — nothing else.

It will make people angry. It will cost us relationships. We accept that, because the moment sifarish enters, the woman with nobody to speak for her is the first one turned away — and she is the entire reason this exists.

You will be able to check

Every three months we will publish what came in, what went out, and what it did. Not names, not photographs, not anybody's face attached to their worst month — but the numbers, plainly.

Trust is not something we can ask you for. It is something we have to hand you the means to verify.

If you need help

Write to us or send a WhatsApp message. Say as much or as little as you want to. You do not need a reference, a letter, or anyone to vouch for you.

And you do not need to explain how you ended up here. Life happens to everyone. We are not going to ask you to prove your suffering before we take you seriously.

If you want to help

Money is the least of it. Teach a skill for two hours a week. Give someone their first order. Hire one person. Take a child's fees for one year. Sit with a woman who has not been listened to in a long time.

And if you can do none of that — buy your masala from us. That is help too. It is, in fact, exactly how this is funded.

What we are actually hoping for

That the woman who came to this door with her head down comes back one day with work to give somebody else.

That is the whole dream. Everything above is just the method.

Here nobody is poor, nobody is a burden, nobody is a stranger. Whoever comes, comes with their dignity intact — and leaves with something more than they arrived with.