Gagan Handlooms

Our shop is number 47 and 48. We are tucked away in the Shilpa Sandya Vedika area of the Night Bazar. If you’ve ever been to Shilparamam, you know it has a specific feel to it. It’s different from a regular mall. We deal with handlooms and textiles mostly. The night market has its own rhythm. Things usually start picking up as the sun goes down and the lights come on. It can get quite lively in the evenings. We spend a lot of time arranging the displays so people can see the patterns. Handloom work takes up a lot of space, so having two shop numbers helps us spread things out a bit. It’s a lot of manual labor, moving heavy rolls of cloth and making sure everything stays clean. Dust is always a problem in an open-air kind of market. We use old fans to keep the air moving during the hotter months. It’s a family-run kind of thing. My uncle started it, and now we just keep it going. We aren't looking to become some massive corporation. We just like the atmosphere of the bazar and the people who visit. Sometimes tourists come by, and other times it's just locals looking for something for their home. We stay open late because that's when the market is at its peak. It’s a long day, but we're used to it by now. We close up when the last few customers head home.