Aggarwal Hardware

Our shop is right in the middle of the chaos at Paharganj, specifically at Shop No 1560 in the Main Bazar. If you know this area, you know it never really gets quiet. We have been here for years, squeezed in among all the other shops and the crowds of people walking toward the station. The shop is small, but we use every inch of the walls to hang tools, locks, and plumbing parts. Sometimes it feels like if you pull one thing off the shelf, five other things might fall down. We get all sorts of people coming in—locals who have lived in Paharganj their whole lives and travelers who need a padlock or a tool to fix something in their room. It’s a lot of climbing up ladders to find a specific size of screw or a certain pipe fitting. The Main Bazar is always loud with horns and people shouting, but inside the shop, we just focus on whatever the person in front of us needs. We don't have a big staff, just a couple of us who know where the old stock is hidden. It gets hot in the summer with the door open to the street, but we’re used to it. We open early and stay until the market starts to thin out at night. It is just a regular hardware shop doing what we have always done in this busy part of town.