Orissa Handloom

Walk into Plot No. 385 in Saheed Nagar and you’ll see piles of fabric everywhere. Orissa Handloom is a bit of a maze sometimes. We’ve got stacks of ikat and heavy cotton that reach almost to the ceiling. It’s not a shiny showroom like the ones you see in the big malls. It’s more of a working space where the scent of fresh dye hangs in the air most mornings. Bhubaneswar gets really hot, but inside among the rows of clothes, it feels a bit different. We spend our days folding, measuring, and talking to the weavers who bring their work in from the villages. Sometimes the colors aren't exactly what we expected, but that's just the nature of hand-made stuff. There’s a certain rhythm to the way things work here in Saheed Nagar. Customers come in, look through the stacks, and we chat about the different patterns. It’s a bit messy, especially on delivery days when new bundles arrive and we have no place to put them. We don’t use any fancy computer systems for the inventory here. Most of it is just written down in thick registers or kept in our heads. It’s how we’ve always done it. The old fans hum overhead while we sort through the silks. We aren't trying to be the biggest shop in town. We just like the feel of the cloth and the way a good handloom piece looks when it’s finally finished.