Kalai Engineering

The shop is down at 73 Periyar Street in the Tambaram Sanitorium area. If you’ve been around Chennai-47 for a while, you probably know this street. It’s full of small workshops and people moving parts around. My hands are usually covered in oil by ten in the morning and they stay that way until I go home. We have a lot of heavy machinery crowded into the space, so you have to watch where you walk. There’s always a smell of metal and cutting fluid in the air. It’s loud, too. Between the grinding and the clanking, you have to shout to be heard sometimes. We don’t have an office with air conditioning or anything like that. Just a small desk in the corner where the bills are kept under a heavy iron weight. People bring in all sorts of bits and pieces that need fixing or making. We take a look, see what can be done, and get to work. The floor is concrete and has plenty of stains from years of jobs. On hot Chennai afternoons, we keep the big shutters wide open to catch whatever breeze comes down Periyar Street. It’s hard work and the days are long, especially when a big order comes in. But we’ve been doing this for years and know our machines well. Most customers are locals who just drop by when they need something turned or welded. It is just a basic engineering workshop.