Shree Mahaveer Traders

Shree Mahaveer Traders is located at No. 4, Strotten Muthia Mudali Street, right in the heart of Sowcarpet. If you know anything about Sowcarpet, you know how narrow and crowded these streets can get. It is a constant buzz of people, carts, and scooters squeezing past each other from dawn until well after dark. Our shop is one of those old-style places with a high ceiling and shelves that go all the way up. We have to use a tall wooden ladder to reach the stuff at the very top. It’s a bit rickety, so you have to be careful when you’re climbing. The front of the shop stays open to the street, so we get to hear everything happening outside. We spend a lot of time talking to the other shopkeepers on the block while we wait for deliveries. There is a lot of history in these walls, and you can see it in the way the stone floor has worn down in the middle from years of people walking over it. We don’t have air conditioning, so we rely on the big ceiling fans to move the air around when the Chennai heat gets heavy. It’s a messy, loud, and busy place to work, but we wouldn't want to be anywhere else. We keep our records in big handwritten books because that’s how we’ve always done it. It’s a lot of manual work, moving boxes and counting stock, but it keeps us on our feet every single day.