Sri Balaji Marble House

Our shop is right on Radhanagar Road. If you know where the Chitra Cinema Hall is, we are very close to that. It’s a busy spot in the Hirapur area of West Burdwan. At Sri Balaji Marble House, we have piles of stone and tile everywhere. It’s a bit of a maze sometimes when we get a new shipment in. We spend the day showing people the different types of marble we have. It’s a lot of manual labor, shifting tiles around so people can see the patterns at the bottom of the stack. The road outside is always noisy with rickshaws and people heading to the cinema. We don't have a fancy office; we usually just sit on a stool near the entrance. The dust from the stone is just part of the life here. We don't use a lot of sales talk. If a piece of marble has a chip, we tell the person. We prefer being honest about what’s in the yard. Most of our customers are locals building a small house or fixing up a room. We keep the ledger books by hand and try to stay organized. It’s a simple business. We open when the sun is up and close when it gets dark. Working with stone is heavy and dirty, but it’s what we’ve been doing on Radhanagar Road for quite some time now. We just handle the heavy lifting and keep the gate open for whoever stops by. It’s just how things go in Hirapur.