Akshar Agarbatti

We run things out of a flat in Parswanath Township, over in the New Naroda area. It’s a residential spot, Part 7 to be exact, so it feels more like a home than a big factory. We’ve been making agarbatti here for quite some time now. Usually, the whole hallway smells like sandalwood or jasmine depending on what we are working on that day. It’s a simple setup. We have a few rooms where the raw sticks are kept and another area for the packing at Janvi Flat. It’s mostly family and a few neighbors who help out when things get busy. We spend a lot of time sitting and making sure the sticks are coated evenly. It’s quiet work, mostly. We don’t have a big sign out front or anything. People in Krishnagar know we are here if they need anything. Sometimes the weather affects how the sticks dry, so we have to watch the humidity levels pretty closely. On rainy days, everything slows down a bit. We just pack things into boxes and wait for the local shops to pick them up. It’s not a complicated life, but it keeps us busy from morning till evening. We like being part of this neighborhood. Sometimes the kids from the township stop by to see what we're doing. We just keep doing what we know how to do, one box at a time and then we start over again the next day.