So, what is Chowringee?
At its simplest, Chowringee is a handloom store. We make shirts, dresses, jackets, sarees, wallets, and fabric covers for books. If it is handloom cloth, we try to make something of it.
Handloom is the one thing that does not move. Everything else is fluid: art expressed through textiles, and slow fashion with the unglamorous parts left in.
Where does art come in?
For a long time, I assumed I would be an artist. Somewhere along the way I understood that there are more ways to make art than a brush and a canvas.
Chowringee is where that assumption went. The cloth is the canvas or the muse. I like taking art off the gallery wall and putting it on the body, and into the books we carry.
How did sarees enter the picture?
I began in textiles at a dupatta store, and a saree keeps much the same rhythm. Adding sarees felt less like a leap than a continuation. We are simply connecting the dots, so the picture comes into focus.
Why the name?
Chowringee, or Chowringhee, is a famous stretch at the heart of Calcutta. Officially it is Jawaharlal Nehru Road, though people still say Chowringhee. It was once lined with British-era bungalows, which earned the city the name City of Palaces. Today it is a busy corridor of shops, food and ordinary life.
Etymologists have never settled on where the name comes from. One legend traces it to Chourangi Giri, the yogi said to have founded the original Kalighat temple.
In a bazaar, disparate things sit side by side, and nobody asks them to match.
That is why I added Bazaar. A bazaar can hold anything.
What does Calcutta mean to you?
My heart belongs to Calcutta. I am born and raised there16 years of my life. So the influence in insurmountable.
What came before Chowringee?
I opened my first store at twenty-one in around 2014. For a few years it did well, until a few months before COVID-19, when, for personal reasons, I closed it. I also wanted to study. I finished my master’s, trained as a neuropsychologist, and worked in hospitals.
Textiles kept pulling me back. I complimented my professors on their ikkat blouses. I helped friends shop. I made clothes for a few people. After a great deal of deliberation, and what I can only call whataboutery, I stopped arguing with myself and returned to a store.
Where do the book covers come in?
I wanted a way to bring my love of literature into the cloth. That became Chhupi Kitaab: books wrapped in handloom fabric, with a cue on the cover in place of a title. You meet the story blind.
Before I even had a studio, I took twenty-five of them, Wuthering Heights among the titles, to a pop-up at a neuroscience exhibit. Fourteen sold. What mattered more than the number was what the sale showed: that a handmade fabric cover could stand as a craft in its own right.
What does "slow" actually mean here?
Zero waste, first. Our scraps go to slum communities, to be stuffed into pillows and gadda, and to NGOs for art projects. What is left, I turn into book covers myself.
Then there is the unglamorous arithmetic. I priced a dress at ₹2,499 to sit just under the line where apparel tax jumps from 5% to 18% GST. It does not belong on a mood board. It is also what keeps a small label alive.
Tell us about the space in Vashi.
We opened a physical storefront in Sector 17, Vashi: part showroom, part working atelier.
Up front are the samples, the sarees and the Chhupi Kitaab shelf. Behind, the workshop, where orders are made to measure. Clients can touch the raw weave, talk through a fit, and watch a garment cut from yards of handloom. It brings back something of the bazaar: maker and wearer in the same room.
What's next?
More forms, wherever handloom will go. Some experiments will work and some won't, and I will say so either way. I want to keep building the community, and to start a daily video series: but as of now, I have my plate full. Chowringee is a playground, and I intend to keep it one.
If someone remembers just one thing?
That it is all heart, it is still learning, and that it is rooted entirely in handloom.