Azad Fireworks Factory

You have to go out toward Ajmer Road to find us, near Laxmi Narayan Vihar. Being a fireworks factory means we need a lot of open space and we have to stay away from the main crowded parts of Kishangarh. It’s quiet out here most of the year. We spend months just preparing, mixing the powders, and rolling the tubes. It’s a lot of repetitive work with your hands. You get used to the smell of sulfur after a while. When the festival season gets close, everything changes and we are working late into the night. The courtyard gets filled with boxes waiting to be loaded onto the trucks. We have to be very careful with how we handle everything, so we don't allow any smoking or anything like that anywhere near the gate. It’s a serious business, but it’s also what we’ve always done. My father knew this trade and now we are doing it. Sometimes people from the city drive out to buy things directly from us because they know where we are. We have a small room where we keep the finished stock, and it’s always cool in there. It’s a strange way to make a living, waiting for the big holidays, but it keeps us busy and the location on Ajmer Road is good for the transport. We don't change how we work, we just keep making things the old way because it works.