Trumark Engineering Industries

Thiruvalluvar Street is where we spend most of our daylight hours. It’s not a huge place, just No. 101, but we make it work for the kind of engineering we do. Most mornings start with the sound of the heavy metal shutters going up and the smell of grease and old machinery. We’ve been here in Krishnapuram for a while now, and the neighbors know the sound of our lathes by heart. It gets pretty hot in the afternoons, especially when the machines have been running since eight. We don’t have fancy air conditioning, just some old ceiling fans that move the heavy air around. There’s always someone coming by to ask if we can fix a small part or weld something that broke on their equipment. We just take the work as it comes without making a big fuss about it. Sometimes the floor gets cluttered with metal scraps and shavings, and we have to spend half an hour sweeping just to see the ground again. Our desk is usually buried under papers and old blueprints that have coffee rings on them. It isn’t the cleanest office in the world, but we know exactly where everything is. People find us easily enough because we’re right on the street. We don’t do much talking; we just get to the cutting and measuring. It’s a living, and it keeps us busy from Monday to Saturday. By the time evening rolls around, our hands are usually stained black with oil, and we’re ready to lock up and head home to rest. That’s just how it goes here at Trumark.