Jamil Painter

If you walk down Chittorgarh Road and turn into Gali Number 3 in Gulali Nagri, you’ll find where I keep all my ladders and paint cans. I started doing this years ago because I liked working with my hands and seeing a room change colors. It’s hard work, mostly scraping old flakes off walls and making sure the edges look decent. My clothes usually have spots of white or yellow on them by the time I get home. I take on small jobs like a single bedroom or bigger ones where we do the whole outside of a house. I usually have a few guys helping me out when the work gets heavy. We show up early, get the sheets down so we don't mess up the floors, and just get to it. Sometimes the weather doesn't help and the paint takes forever to dry, which can be annoying for the homeowners. I try to tell people exactly what they need without adding extra stuff they don't want. It’s a lot of climbing up and down and reaching for corners. My hands stay pretty rough from all the cleaning and sanding. People in the neighborhood know me as the guy who’s always carrying a brush. It's not a complicated business but it takes patience to get the layers right. We just keep our heads down and finish what we started so we can move to the next house.