Birbal Carpet Producer Company Limited

If you go to Hatwa Khas and look for Vishwambhar Prasad Chaturvedi, that's where you'll find us. We are Birbal Carpet Producer Company Limited. This area has a long history with carpets, and we are just trying to keep that going in our own way. It’s not a big factory with machines. A lot of what happens is done by hand, the old-fashioned way. We have a lot of local weavers who work with us. It’s a slow process. You can't rush a good carpet. Sometimes it takes weeks just to finish one piece. We aren't a corporate office with people in suits. We are usually covered in wool dust or talking about thread counts. Vishwambhar handles the business end of things from his place. It’s a bit crowded with samples and paperwork, but it works for us. We don't have a big corporate plan. We just want to make sure the weavers get paid and the carpets get sold. It’s a tough business because there is so much competition from cheap machine-made stuff. We just keep doing what we know. It’s honest work. Sometimes we struggle to find enough workers, and other times we have too many carpets and not enough buyers. That’s just how the trade is. We stay in Hatwa Khas because it’s home. The smell of wool and the sound of the looms is what we're used to in Hatwa Khas. Birbal Carpet isn't some high-end luxury brand you see in magazines. It’s just us making carpets in our village. It’s hard on the hands and the eyes, especially the detailed work. Vishwambhar helps us keep everything on track. He’s the one who deals with the buyers and the government forms, which none of the rest of us want to do. We’d rather be at the looms. It’s a quiet life for the most part, except when we have a big order to finish. Then everyone stays up late and the tea keeps flowing. We don't have a big office or anything. Our work happens in the homes and small workshops around the village. It’s very local. We don't use any big words to talk about our carpets. We just say they are sturdy and made the right way. We've been doing this for a long time, and we hope we can keep doing it for a lot longer. It’s a part of who we are. We aren't looking to expand into some massive global company. We just want to keep the tradition alive here.