New Bharat Cement Jaali Works

Our shop, New Bharat Cement Jaali Works, is over at Shop No. 25 on Pul Bogda Road. We are in the Subhash Nagar area, specifically Ashoka Garden, right across from Kartar Arcade and near the Capital Petrol Pump. If you’ve ever walked by, you’ve probably seen the cement dust on our boots. We make cement jaalis, which is a messy, wet job that takes a lot of patience. You have to wait for things to dry just right or the whole thing is ruined. We have molds lying all over the place and bags of cement stacked up to the ceiling. It’s not a quiet place, especially with the petrol pump and the arcade so close by. There’s always the sound of traffic and people shouting to be heard. We don’t have an office with a computer; we usually just sit on a stool and figure things out on a piece of scrap paper. It’s hard work on the hands and the knees, but we’ve been doing it a long time. People come to us when they’re building something and need that specific look that only a cement jaali can give. We don’t try to sell anyone on anything. They see what we make, they see the work, and that’s usually enough. It’s just a plain shop where we work with our hands every day. We usually clean up the mixer at the end of the shift and start again tomorrow.