Ananiaa Textiles

Our business, Ananiaa Textiles, sits on Marudhamalai Main Road in Vadavalli. It’s a busy stretch of road, especially with people heading up towards the temple. We’ve been at No. 4 for a while now. The shop is basically a long room filled with racks and stacks of cloth. We don't have any fancy air conditioning, just the breeze coming in through the front and a couple of ceiling fans that have seen better days. It gets a bit dusty because of all the traffic outside, so we’re constantly wiping down the counters. Most of our time is spent unfolding fabric for people to look at and then folding it back up again. It’s repetitive, but you get used to the rhythm of it. We carry a mix of different materials, mostly stuff that people around here need for their daily wear or for small stitching jobs. It’s just a few of us working here. We know most of the people who walk through the door by name. We don't do any big advertising or have a website. We just open the shutters in the morning and wait for the day to start. Sometimes it’s quiet and we just sit and talk, other times it’s a scramble to help three people at once. We just focus on having enough variety in stock and making sure the prices are fair for the neighbors. It’s a regular life on a regular road, and we just take it as it comes every day.