Gopideas Gangadas Vastralaya

You can find us at No. 16 Pageya Patti Street. We call it Gopideas Gangadas Vastralaya. It’s a traditional cloth shop, or Vastralaya as some say. Pageya Patti Street is one of those narrow lanes where you really have to know where you are going. It’s not a place for big cars. We have rolls and rolls of cloth stacked up all the way to the ceiling. The smell of fresh fabric is the first thing you notice when you walk in. We spend most of our time unrolling these fabrics for people to look at and then rolling them back up again. It’s good for the arms, I suppose. The shop has been here for quite some time and not much has changed in the way we do things. We have a few wooden benches for people to sit on while they look at the patterns. The floor is usually covered in little bits of thread and cloth scraps by the end of the day. We sweep it up and start over the next morning. It’s a simple business. We don't have a website or anything like that, we just stay here on the street and wait for people to come by. The neighbors are good people and we all look out for each other. When the weather is nice, we sit outside on the step for a bit and watch the world go by. It’s just how things are here at No. 16.