The world this week is sadly less of a global village than it was 10 days ago. At least Kusum Tiwari is back in India, safe and sound after her first trip to East Asia, and two weeks in Japan.
Kusum (whose name means "flower") meets me in August in Jiyugaoka's People Tree shop, where clothes made by the collective she founded three years ago in New Delhi are now on sale. A slight, sweetly smiling figure in jeans and an ikat-design cotton shirt, handwoven from tie-dyed thread, she hangs up samples of shirts, skirts and trousers and declines a glass of mint tea. "I've been drinking tea all day."