Sutures and stitches

BENGALURU : How do you like to spend your time after a stressful day at work? Catch up on a gripping series or movie perhaps? Here is a city-based surgeon who crochets to destress after long gruelling days in an operation theatre. Dr Nayan Pinto does not just crochet during his spare time, but also runs a social media page called Granny’s Knot, where he sells his crochet work. He now uses all the proceeding towards charity or patient care.

Pinto had a knack for art and craft right from his childhood when he saw his sister doing it. But he picked up crochet as a hobby last year, when he saw a YouTube video of a man coming up with various items through this skill. “Last year, I was ill and bed-ridden for almost three months. I was scrolling through videos when I came across a man doing crochet. Since I was always interested in crafts, I picked it up. Also, it’s kind of cool to know how to come up with something fun and interesting from just one thread,” says Pinto, who is currently a third-year resident at Father Muller Hospital, Mangaluru.

Picking up a skill and perfecting it surely takes some amount of time, but Pinto took to crochet like a fish takes to water. After he joined work, he didn’t want to let go of his newfound love and dedicated some amount of time to it after spending more than 12 hours in the hospital. “I like to crochet and chill,” he jokes. It could be a fun skill to learn, but he had no idea what to do with the products he created. That’s when his friends, Malvina D’Cunha, Supraja Subramanian and Amrutha Makam, created a page on Instagram in March, by the name Granny’s Knot, for him to sell the products.

He later came up with the idea of giving all the proceedings to charity. He has already donated to UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders. Usually a crochet top is priced in the range of Rs 2,000-2,800, while the headgear costs between Rs 200 and Rs 250. “I know it might sound a little expensive but it’s for a cause,” adds the 28-year-old.

While many might think the name ‘Granny’s Knot’ was picked while imagining an elderly person knitting, Pinto says there is another story to it. “We learn different knots to perform during various surgeries and a granny’s knot is one of those. Medical people would get it immediately,” says Pinto, who often faces the question about why would a man take up crochet. “A boy doing crochet is as normal as a girl playing football,” is his usual answer.