Uttam Banarsi Pan House

We are located at No 106 in Cottonpet. It is a very small space, even for a shop that sells pan. Uttam Banarsi Pan House is where I spend almost all of my day. I have all my glass jars lined up in a row with betel nuts, gulkand, and all the different spices we use. Cottonpet is always a crowded area, so there is constant noise coming in from the street outside. People will often stop their scooters right in the middle of the road and yell their orders over the sound of the traffic. I have been making pan since I was just a teenager. My fingers are usually stained a bit red or green from the lime and the leaves I handle. It is not the kind of place where you come to sit down and relax. You get your pan and then you move on with your day. We get our leaves delivered fresh every morning from the market. Sometimes the batch isn't great, and I have to sit there and pick through them one by one. I really don't like wasting any of the materials. The shop is quite narrow, but we have learned how to make it work over the years. Some of our regular customers come by every single night after they finish their dinner. They like to stand around and talk for a few minutes while I wrap up their order. I don't use any machines for this. Everything is done by hand with a simple knife.