Kishan Hastakala

Kishan Hastakala is located at number 32 in the middle of Chickpet. We deal with all sorts of hand-crafted items, or hastakala, as we call it. The shop is pretty small and it's usually packed from the floor all the way to the ceiling. Chickpet is a tight squeeze for anyone visiting, and our shop is no different. We spend most of our time unpacking new items that come in and showing them to whoever happens to walk through the door. It’s a lot of manual work, moving heavy things around just to find exactly what a customer is looking for. We don't have any fancy displays or special lighting to make things look better than they are. It’s just the items sitting on the shelves or hanging from the walls. The street outside is always noisy with the constant sound of horns and street vendors. Sometimes it feels like the whole city is trying to squeeze into this one narrow street. We’ve been here at number 32 for a long time, so we know the rhythm of the market pretty well. We open up early and usually stay until the sun goes down. It’s not an easy job, standing on your feet all day in such a small space, but we do enjoy the interaction with all kinds of people. Every piece of work we have in here has its own story, though we don't make a big deal about it. We just sell what we have and keep things simple.