Prafful Cloth Store

If you walk past the G D Patil Building on Plot 355 in Andheri West, you’ll see Prafful Cloth Store. We’ve been here in this building for quite some time. The shop is filled with rolls of different fabrics—cottons, silks, and some synthetic stuff too. It’s a lot of colors all mixed together. My father started this business, and now I’m the one mostly handling the day-to-day things. We don't have any mannequins in the window because the sun would just fade the clothes. Instead, we just stack the latest bundles near the entrance. The floor is made of old tiles that have seen better days. Andheri West is a fancy area now, but our shop feels more like the old times. Customers come in and spend a long time feeling the material before they decide to buy a few meters. We have a big wooden table where we measure and cut the cloth with a heavy pair of iron scissors. Sometimes the edges aren't perfectly straight, but we try our best to get it right. It’s a quiet kind of work, except when the local festivals start and everyone wants new outfits at the same time. We don't have air conditioning, just a couple of ceiling fans that creak a bit when they turn. People know us for being honest about the quality of the thread. It’s just us and our stacks of cloth.