Abhishek

Living and working near the Barari Railway Colony means you always have the sound of trains in the background. Our place, Abhishek, is right there near Durga Sthan, so it gets pretty crowded during the festival times. Most days, it’s just the usual routine of opening up and seeing who comes through the door. The building itself is older, with those thick walls that stay a bit cooler in the summer heat, which is a blessing. We don’t have any fancy decorations on the walls, just a calendar and maybe a few notes pinned up so we don’t forget the important stuff. Being so close to the station, we get a lot of people just passing through or neighbors who’ve lived in the colony for decades. We know most of them by name. It’s a practical kind of life. We handle what needs to be handled and don’t spend much time worrying about the small stuff. The floor is concrete and easy to sweep, which is good because of all the dust that blows in from the tracks. Sometimes the power goes out for an hour in the afternoon, and we just sit outside on the steps and wait it out. It’s a bit of a slow pace compared to the big cities, but it suits us just fine. We’ve been in this spot near Durga Sthan for a while and don’t see that changing anytime soon. It is a simple life here.