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Billing for your garment shop in Assam

Mekhela chador by the set, gamosa by the piece and the Bihu rush on one phone.

Women customers sitting on a shop floor choosing embroidered cloth with a shopkeeper, saris hanging behind them
Women customers sitting on a shop floor choosing embroidered cloth with a shopkeeper, saris hanging behind them Photo: Jan Bockaert, CC BY-SA 2.0

From a Bihu stage group's order to a gamosa that is plainly handloom

  1. The stage group's order on one page, with each girl's part payment

    Open one page for the group and put each girl's cloth on it with her size and its rate. Write each part payment as it comes, with its day. When the second visit comes, the page says who has paid what and what is left, and nobody has to guess it from five memories.

  2. The set sold as a set, the chador sold as a chador

    Keep the mekhela, the chador and the blouse piece as items of their own, each with a rate, and put them on one bill when she takes all three. When she takes only the chador, the bill shows only the chador, and the stock of each piece is counted down by itself.

  3. A gamosa that says handloom or machine on its own line

    Give the handloom gamosa and the machine-made gamosa each its own item with its own rate. The bill says which one the customer took, the stock counts them apart, and at the end of the month you read how many of each went out, from the list and not from a guess.

A drawing for Bihu: a drum with a gamosa tied across it, a horn beside it and a second gamosa on a pole
A drawing for Bihu: a drum with a gamosa tied across it, a horn beside it and a second gamosa on a pole

Handloom beside powerloom, and a mekhela chador that is three pieces

  • Two gamosas on one rail, at two prices

    The same rail holds a gamosa woven on a handloom and one that came off a power loom. They look alike from the door. One costs much more than the other, and the customer holds them both and asks why. You know which is which by the feel and by the label a supplier gave you, but the notebook has one line called gamosa, and at the end of the month you cannot say how many of each you sold.

  • A mekhela chador is three pieces and one sale

    A woman who wants a mekhela chador takes the mekhela to wear below, the chador to drape above and a blouse piece to be stitched. Some days she takes only the chador, or two blouse pieces for the girls at home. Priced as one set, the pieces cannot be counted apart. Priced as three, the bill is long and somebody forgets the blouse piece, and it is you who finds it missing when she comes back.

  • The girls of one lane, one stage and one colour

    Before Bihu a group of girls comes in together, wanting the same red and white for the stage. They try, they choose, they pay a little now and promise the rest when the money comes in from home. You carry five names, five sizes and five part payments in your head, and by the second visit two of the girls remember what they paid differently from you.

A white gamosa with a broad red woven border of flowers and thin red stripes
A white gamosa with a broad red woven border of flowers and thin red stripes Photo: Madhrakangri, CC BY 4.0
A cream gamosa laid flat, its red woven pattern of flowers, birds and lamps in rows
A cream gamosa laid flat, its red woven pattern of flowers, birds and lamps in rows

Sualkuchi silk, Dhubri jute and a Tezpur river port: where the cloth customers are

The customers of an Assam cloth shop earn from silk, jute and tea. A few districts, and what they are known for.

  • Sualkuchi town in Kamrup district is a silk handloom cluster, often called the Manchester of Assam, where many migrant hired weavers work.
  • Dhubri depends mainly on agriculture and forest products; paddy is the main income and jute and mustard seed are the major cash crops.
  • Under the British, Tezpur became an important centre of trade and commerce, used as a river port for the surrounding tea gardens.
  • Incredible India describes Tinsukia as Assam's industrial powerhouse for tea, oil, coal and commerce.
A woman at a loom in a wooden shed with white warp threads stretched in front of her and red bands at each side
A woman at a loom in a wooden shed with white warp threads stretched in front of her and red bands at each side Photo: Dhrubazaan Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tools for a counter of gamosas, mekhela chadors and silk lengths

  • Bills on your phone

    A bill that names the muga chador and the cotton mekhela, each at its own rate, shared on WhatsApp the moment the girl pays.

  • Credit book (khata)

    A page for the stage group of one lane, each girl's cloth and part payment dated, and the balance of the group on the last line.

  • Your own online shop

    A shop page of the new Bihu pieces, shared in the lane's WhatsApp group before the stage rehearsals begin.

Craft stores in three cities that kept one stock list

Tisser Artisan Trust sells the work of artisan clusters in craft stores in Mumbai, Nagpur and Delhi. With Bharatrath it got billing in each store, an online marketplace and one stock list.

What Assam garment shops ask about gamosas, silk and the Bihu stage order

Muga silk is sold by the metre off the bolt and also as a ready chador. Can I keep both?

Yes. The silk off the bolt is an item sold by the metre, and the ready chador is an item sold by the piece. Each has its own rate and its own count, so a metre cut never hides the chadors on the rail.

I stock mekhela chador in cotton, pat and muga. Do they need separate items?

Yes, give each fibre its own item and rate. The report then shows which fibre sold best before Bihu, and a cotton piece never uses up the muga count.

A Bihu stage group pays in parts over two visits. Can I keep its order together?

Yes. Open one page for the group, put each girl's cloth on it, and write each payment against it with its day. The page ends with what the group still owes.

More questions every shop asks

The gamosa drive, and what a Guwahati customer can pay

Ahead of Rongali Bihu 2024, Assam's Directorate of Handloom and Textiles continued a drive against machine-made gamosas from other states in Guwahati markets. A shop that stocks both kinds is the shop customers ask, and it helps to know before they ask which gamosa is which.

In April 2023, many Guwahati shopkeepers backed the government move on powerloom gamosas, but many said most customers cannot afford expensive handloom products. That is the same counter's two truths: the shop wants the handloom piece to sell and the customer has a limit.