S. M. Electricals

If you’ve ever walked through Sowcarpet, you know how tight the streets are. We are at 31 Strotten Muthiah Mudali Street. It’s an old part of town, and our shop feels that way too. We have wires hanging in some places and boxes of switches stacked up to the ceiling. It gets hot in the summer, even with the fans going full blast. We spend the day talking to contractors and people looking for specific parts for their homes. Most of the time, our hands are a bit dusty from handling the components. We don't have any fancy displays or bright lights. It's just shelves and drawers full of electrical bits and pieces. Sometimes a customer brings in a broken part to show us what they need, and we have to dig through the back to find a match. The tea man comes around twice a day, which is the highlight of the afternoon. Dealing with the traffic on this street is the hardest part of the job. You can’t even get a small rickshaw through sometimes. We just focus on getting the right items to the right people. It’s a plain business, nothing more. We close up when the sun goes down and the street gets a little quieter. The floor needs a sweep every evening because of all the bits of wire and cardboard that end up down there during the day.