Shobha Saree Centre

Shobha Saree Centre is right at 38 Bapu Bazar. If you’ve walked through the bazaar, you’ve probably passed by our door many times without thinking about it. It is a lively street with a lot of tourists and locals always moving about. Our shop is quite narrow but it goes back a long way. We have shelves lining both sides from the floor to the ceiling. Most of them are packed with sarees of all sorts. We have a small stool near the front where I sit when there are no customers. It’s a good spot to watch the world go by. We’ve had this shop for a long time and the wooden counters are worn smooth from years of sliding fabric across them. We don't really do anything modern or high-tech. We just show the sarees, talk about the work on them, and help people pick something they like. Sometimes the shop gets very hot in the afternoons, so we keep the door wide open to catch any breeze from the street. The floor is made of old stone and it’s seen a lot of foot traffic over the years. We try to keep things neat, but with so many sarees, there is always a bit of a mess somewhere on the counters. We don't mind it much. It’s a working shop, not a museum. We just keep at it every day from morning until the market finally closes.