This booklet is a deeply personal and reflective body of work, conceived and crafted during the final evaluation of my first year in college. It stands as both an artistic exploration and a social statement, rooted in a desire to confront the uncomfortable realities that lie beneath everyday materials we often take for granted.

At its core, this project sheds light on the harsh and hidden world of child labor within the mica mines of Jharkhand, India — a world largely invisible to the public eye, yet intimately tied to global industries like cosmetics, electronics, and automobile manufacturing. The irony is painful: the shimmer in eyeshadows, nail polish, and even car paints often comes at the cost of children’s health, safety, and futures.

These are children who should be in classrooms, whose hands should be playing with paint, not clawing through jagged rock to harvest the mineral that gives other lives their sheen. In the mica-streaked earth, their childhoods are being chipped away one flake at a time, their dreams buried under layers of dust and exploitation.

With this work, I seek to reveal the beauty and brutality of this contrast — the glittering surface of a global economy and the dark, silent labor that supports it. Each page is an invitation to pause, to reflect, and to see the story behind the sparkle — to recognize the human cost of consumption, especially when it comes wrapped in glamor.

This booklet is more than documentation — it is a plea for awareness, and perhaps, a quiet act of resistance through the language of art.