For Bilimora, a timber-trading and chikoo-growing town where the pace has stayed deliberately slower.
A town that did not chase the boom
Bilimora trades timber and grows chikoo, and the narrow gauge line still runs inland towards Waghai through the forest. It sits between Surat and Mumbai - two of the most relentless commercial centres in the country - and has conspicuously not become like either.
People here often frame that as the town being left behind. It is at least as accurate to say it was a series of choices.
The comparison problem
Proximity is the difficulty. Surat is close enough that everyone has a cousin there earning more, working harder and describing a life that sounds bigger. Against that, a decent living from timber or orchards can start to feel like insufficient ambition.
Clients describe a low-grade sense of underachievement that does not correspond to anything actually wrong with their circumstances. It is entirely relative, and it is entirely real in its effects.
What the work addresses
Working out whether you actually want the thing you feel you should want. Some people here genuinely do want the Surat version and have been talking themselves out of it - that deserves a plan. Others do not want it at all and are simply exhausted from being measured against it - that deserves permission.
Those two need opposite responses, and telling them apart is the useful part.
Sessions
Online, in Gujarati.
Frequently asked questions
- Is it wrong not to be ambitious?
- No. But it is worth checking whether it is a choice or an avoidance, because those feel identical from inside.
- Do you work with orchard and farming families?
- Yes. Seasonal income changes how planning works, and the approach accounts for that.
