The lane opens at seven. By eight the light on Lal Ghat is already warm, and a small workshop on the ground floor of an old haveli begins the day the way it has for years.
8:15 — Paper
The first task is folding. Two hundred sheets of ivory cotton paper, 100 gsm, cut down to four different diary sizes. A bone folder — literally a piece of shaped bone — presses each fold, then again, until each signature of eight sheets lies flat. This is quiet work. A radio hums Hindi film songs.
9:00 — Sewing
The bench moves to sewing. Waxed linen thread, a curved needle, and a template that maps holes to the spine folds of each signature. Every book is stitched through the fold — the same construction used on hand-bound ledgers for centuries — which is what allows a Retkatha diary to open flat on any spread.
We do not use PU adhesive on the spine of any of our books. Glue is applied only at the endpapers, and it is a hide glue that ages with the paper instead of turning brittle over the years.
10:30 — The cover
Full-grain hides arrive from a tannery outside Jaipur. Each hide is inspected for the natural markings we like to preserve — a slight scar along the spine, the pattern of pores near the neck — and cut against a paper template.
Skiving thins the edges by hand so the cover folds cleanly over the book block. This is the step that separates a diary that closes properly from one that gapes at the fore-edge for its whole life.
12:00 — Chai, and the shopfront opens
The workshop is separated from the storefront by a curtain of undyed cotton. Around noon it is pushed aside and the shop opens. Visitors are welcome to sit on the bench and watch. Most days we have a few customers who spend an hour, and that hour is often the most interesting part of ours.
3:00 — Embossing
If your order includes a name, the embossing press comes out after lunch. Brass type is set into a small chase — capital letters only, our shop typeface — heated on a controlled hotplate, and pressed into the leather with hand pressure. Ten characters is the practical maximum before the visual weight of the type overwhelms the corner of the cover.
Each name gets a test press on scrap first. If the proof is off — a letter slightly deep, or the alignment a hair to one side — we reset and try again. We have never sent a diary out with an embossing we would not accept ourselves.
5:30 — Finishing
The final steps are small. Ribbon markers are trimmed on the bias and sealed with a candle so they do not fray. Endpapers are burnished with a bone folder against the inside cover. The book gets a final press between two blocks of wood overnight to set the spine.
8:00 — Close
The shopfront closes at 11 pm most nights. The bench closes earlier — by around eight — because the light we work by is natural and the room does not have overheads that we trust for detail work. The last thing that happens on the bench is a wipe-down with a soft brush. Tomorrow morning, the folded signatures for the next day’s work are already waiting on the corner of the table.
If you find yourself in Udaipur, come by. We are on Lal Ghat, on the lane running down to Jagdish Chowk. You do not need an appointment. There is usually chai.
