White Woods

Our place, White Woods, is located at Maheshwari House on Shahuwan Street in Chandpur. It’s a street that’s seen a lot of history, and the building itself is quite old. We work with wood, so the whole shop smells like sawdust and polish most of the time. It’s a smell I’ve grown to like, though it gets in your clothes and hair by the end of the day. We don’t have a big factory setup, just a workshop where we cut and sand pieces down. There are bits of timber stacked against the walls and half-finished projects sitting in the corners. The lighting isn't the best, so we use some big lamps when we need to see the grain clearly. My brother usually handles the heavy machinery, and I do the planning and the talking to people who drop by. We aren't trying to be some big brand; we just make things that people in the neighborhood need for their homes. The street outside is narrow, and kids are always playing cricket nearby, so you have to be careful when you’re moving long planks of wood around. We keep a ledger for all the work, and it’s mostly hand-written because the old computer we have is too slow to use for anything serious. It’s a simple way of living, but we like being part of the street and working with our hands every day. We don't really have a closing time, just whenever the last job is done.