Festivities are incomplete without dressing up, and dressing up for celebrations is incomplete without accessorising with bangles. For Hyderabadis, bangle shopping is incomplete without dashing off to Laad bazaar to get an idea of the latest design, the best designs or maybe get customised patterns to match the dress you are wearing for the occasion.
Seeing the most crowded shop on a Thursday, we walk into Sami & Sons at Laad bazaar. The glitter in there is dazzling. Shop owner Samiuddin has replaced the old high-watt bulbs with LED lamps, thandi rahti hai aur ujala bhi (it keeps cool and is bright too), he says and proceeds to ask what our requirement is. “This season for Ramzan we have ‘ jhumka bangles ’. Kundan sets and the traditional lac and stone bangles are never out of fashion. But every season, girls like to wear something stunning. Keeping in mind the colours they wear, we have made jhumka bangles in about 30 colours. We also have a mix-and-match stone variety,” Sami explains and says that this age-old relation of lac bangles and Laad bazaar cannot be broken. “I had Govinda, Shilpa Shetty, Neha Dhupia come to my shop to buy bangles. Raza Murad also visited me. You think there are no shops in places like Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills? There are shops there, but people come here. Why? Because every customer knows they will get variety for reasonable rates in the bangle shops of Laad bazaar,” adds Sami as he shows katao-bangles, maharani pieces and gota bangles.
Sami also explains that the karigaars (workers) in the workshops that make these bangles are working overtime before they go on a break during Eid. He adds, “It is a tedious process and needs a lot of patience right from the time of setting the lac to make bangles to placing the stones in patterns and then giving it a final touch.”
