Boutique Anandaniketan

Out here in the Sepco Township in Durgapur, things move at a different pace than the big city. Boutique Anandaniketan is located at House No. 18 on 1st Avenue. It’s a residential-feeling spot, which we like because it makes the shop feel like part of the neighborhood. We’ve been here in this township for a while, and the shop is basically an extension of the house. You can usually hear the normal sounds of the street, kids playing or someone's scooter starting up, while you're looking at the clothes. We don’t have fancy glass displays or bright neon lights. It’s mostly just wooden shelves and some metal rods we put up ourselves. The stock changes based on what we can get our hands on that looks decent. Some days we have a lot of cotton pieces, and other times it’s more heavy stuff. We do a lot of the work ourselves, from picking out the items to bagging them up for people. It’s a small operation. People from the township stop by, often without planning to buy anything, just to see what’s sitting on the counter. We spend a lot of time folding and refolding because things get messy quickly. The lighting is just standard bulbs, so we tell people to step out onto the porch if they want to see the true shade of a dupatta in the sun. It’s simple, maybe a bit plain, but it’s our space.