Katrell Christie wa s a thirty-something former art student turned roller-derby rebel who opened a tea shop in Atlanta. Barely two years later, her life would make a drastic change and so would the lives of a group of girls half a world away.
I chose the name of my tea shop-Dr. Bombay's Underwater tea Party-because it sounded whimsical. India wasn't a part of the equation. Not even remotely.
I didn't do yoga. I had no deep yearning to see the taj Mahal or tour Hindu temples. I was not harboring some spiritual desire to follow the
path of the Buddha. Indian food? I could take it or leave it. But a regular customer, Cate, described a trip she'd taken there as a Rotary Club scholar. She was planning to go again to work with a women's handicraft exchange. Her enthusiasm was infectious.
You should come,
she said after breezing into the shop one day.
I didn't give it much thought. I figured she wanted me, the former
rollergirl, there as the muscle. I was a new business owner with work
stretching for as far as I could see . . .
