Western Ghats Spices

You can find Western Ghats Spices over at 51, Srinivasa Nagar in the Moolavaddhi Kovur area. It’s a bit of a trek if you aren’t from around here, but it’s a nice enough neighborhood once you arrive. The building is tucked away on a side street where things are a little calmer than the main road. Inside, the smell of the goods is the first thing you notice when you walk through the door. It hangs in the air and stays on your clothes long after you leave for the day. We have a few heavy tables set up for packing and a big scale that we have to calibrate every week to make sure it’s still accurate. There are only a handful of us working here, so we all end up doing a bit of everything. One day you might be filling bags, and the next you are helping unload a truck that’s blocked the narrow street. We’ve had to apologize to the neighbors more than once for that. The walls are painted a pale yellow that has faded over time, and we have calendars from three years ago still hanging up because we liked the pictures. We drink a lot of coffee during the afternoon slump. It isn’t a high-tech operation, but we have our system down. We know which floorboard creaks when you walk over it and which window doesn't latch properly. It feels like home to most of us who work here.