I have been having a permanent affair with colours ever since I remember. From the clothes I wear, to the bags I carry, to the lamps at my house, everything has colour. I think colours make one happy. Red is powerful, yellow is so mellow, green seems to always be on the go, purple is so plush, blue defines serenity and fuchsia seems to embody all that’s young and jumpy. And because I love colours, I love Bombay Paperie.

Bombay Paperie is a handmade paper store, started in 2001, which is housed in a 200 years old East India Company building. It stocks papers of all colours and textures. Each corner boasts of the handmade paper products like diaries, origami, paper art figures, greeting cards, paper roses, lamps, gift bags, albums and loose stationary. But these are things you would find in any handmade paper store. What makes Bombay Paperie so unique is that its products come from the only mill in India where the paper is made totally by hand, following the original 17th century traditional process. The mill is entirely handled by just 3 families, less than ten people to whom the craft has been passed on since many generations, and Bombay Paperie ensures that this expertise is put to use and their job not replaced by machinery.

Bombay Paperie also promotes block prints done by using hand carved wooden blocks. When, in the last decades of the 20th century, this craft began to decline in India because of mechanised silk screens, the block makers and the block printers went out of work. After the Godhra riots in Gujarat, when poverty and unemployment took over the state, Bombay Paperie took the initiative to re-employ the workers, and is now is proud to showcase and protect a 500 year old dying craft, saved for posterity.

Bombay Paperie also conducts workshops every Saturday for kids and adults to teach paper craft ideas, donating all the proceeds to organisations that work for unprivileged children.  

In the shop there's always a person to help and give you suggestions on the colours and the textures; I love the fact that the store welcomes personalised orders and, unlike places where bulk orders are a pre-requisite, it would make you a single greeting card just as happily as it would print your numerous wedding invites.

So, if you want to make that personal birthday card or want to write your secret poetry or want to just give a paper rose to your loved one, Bombay Paperie is the place to go to. It’s so much fun to buy pretty things and knowing that you are part of a selfless cause. It could be your next good deed for the week, or it could just be your next treat to yourself. In either way, be prepared to have some very colourful fun at Bombay Paperie.