Vishwakarma Engineering Works

You can find us in Khapa Village, which falls under the Keolari Tehsil. The shop is near the Keolari Post Office, though it’s a bit of a walk if you are coming from the main road. Vishwakarma Engineering Works is mostly a metal and welding shop. We have a big open space where we keep the welding machines and the scrap metal piles. It’s a dusty place because of the unpaved roads around the village, so everything gets a thin layer of brown dirt on it by mid-morning. We mainly work on agricultural tools and fixing gates or frames for the local houses. There is no air conditioning here, just the breeze coming through the open front when the weather is good. My father started this and now I run it with a couple of helpers from the village. We don't have a computer for billing; we just write everything down in a big ledger book that sits on a wooden desk in the corner. Some days are very quiet and we just sit outside on the benches, but other days everyone in the tehsil seems to have something broken at the same time. We don't use any fancy marketing. People know us because we’ve been here for years and they know where to find us when they need something welded or bent back into shape. It's just hard, honest work in a quiet part of the world.