The Manifesto

Some feelings don't survive translation.

Nobody feels in a second language.

You can work in English, text in English, even dream in it sometimes. But the day something actually happens to you, the day you are too tired, too proud, too in love, too done with everyone, the feeling arrives in the language you grew up in.

And then you translate it.

You shrink it until it fits. "Lazy." "Moody." "Dramatic." Words that describe you the way a passport photo describes you. Technically accurate. Completely wrong.

Because आलसी is not lazy. नखरा is not attitude. सुकून is not just calm. These words carry your grandmother's voice, old film posters, afternoons that smelled of rain. Their translations carry nothing.

We started The House of Goods because we were tired of translating ourselves.

So we make T-Shirts that say the real word. One feeling, in the language it was actually felt in, drawn in the art this country made, printed one piece at a time, in India.

You were never "in a mood."

You were in your mood. It had a name all along.

Wear it.

— O&M