Sri Lakshmi Venkatesswara Swamy Jewellery Works

This shop is situated at H. No. 1-139 in Badangpet, which is part of the Rangareddy district. It’s a small place where we do a lot of detailed work with gold and silver. If you walk inside, you’ll see our small workbenches with tiny tools and little lamps that help us see what we are doing. The air usually smells a bit like the chemicals we use for cleaning the metals or the heat from the small blowtorches. We spend most of the day hunched over these benches. It is slow work and you have to have a lot of patience to get the shapes right. Badangpet is a growing area but our corner of it stays pretty much the same. We don't have a big glass display like the shops in the city. Most of what we do is custom work for people who live nearby and know where to find us. Sometimes the power goes out and we have to wait it out or use a small torch to finish a piece. The floor is tiled but it gets dirty with the metal filings and dust. We keep a few stools for people to sit on while they wait. It’s not a fancy place by any means, just a workshop where we put in the hours every day. Most of our time is spent just focusing on the jewelry right in front of us.