Pankaj Pagdi Wala

We’ve been around Karol Bagh for a long time now. Tying pagdis is what we do every single day of the week. People usually come here when they have a wedding in the family or some other small function at home. It’s a skill my father showed me many years back and now it’s just become a regular part of our life here in New Delhi. Sometimes the shop gets really busy, especially when the wedding season kicks in, so you might have to wait on the bench for a bit. We just use the small space we have here in the market. It's definitely not a big fancy place with air conditioning or anything like that. Most folks who live around Karol Bagh know exactly where to find us by now. We don't really do much else besides the turbans and maybe some related stuff like pins or small bits of jewelry. It gets incredibly hot in Delhi during the summer months, so we keep a small fan going and just get on with the work as best as we can. You see all sorts of people walking by the shop front every hour. Sometimes they stop and ask for help with a very specific style they saw in a movie, and we try our best to get it right for them. It’s actually quite hard work on the fingers after a few hours of folding cloth, but it’s what pays the bills. My cousin helps me out when things get really crowded. We keep a lot of extra cloth in the back just in case someone needs a specific color we don't have out front.