Kala Mandir Sarees

Our shop, Kala Mandir Sarees, is located at 108/144 in Sisamau Bazar. If you know Sisamau, you know how crowded it gets, especially during the festival season. There are people everywhere and the noise never really stops. Inside the shop, it’s a bit different. We have stacks of sarees piled high on the shelves. I spend a lot of my time unfolding them to show the colors and then folding them back up neatly, which is harder than it looks. The fabric is heavy sometimes. We’ve been in this spot for a while, and the floor is a bit worn from all the feet walking over it. We don't have fancy air conditioning, just some ceiling fans that spin all day long. The smell of the market—food and dust and everything else—comes in through the door. Customers come in looking for something specific, and we try to find it in the piles. It’s a lot of manual work, moving boxes and organizing the displays. My hands are usually tired by the end of the day from handling all that cloth. Sisamau is a tough place to work because it’s so busy, but it’s where we are. We just keep the shop open and wait for the next person to walk in. It’s a simple life selling clothes in a busy bazaar and we are used to the noise.