Malhotra Flowers

Malhotra Flowers is located at 4524 Gali Jaatan in the Pahari Dhiraj area of Sadar Bazar. If you know Sadar Bazar, you know how packed it gets with shoppers and carts. Gali Jaatan is a small lane where we set up every day. The work starts very early in the morning when the fresh stock arrives. The smell of the flowers is the first thing you notice when you walk toward our spot. It’s a messy business with water on the floor and stems everywhere. We spend hours trimming leaves and making sure everything looks okay. It’s not a fancy boutique; it’s a working shop in a very busy market. We have buckets lined up against the walls and barely enough room to walk through the middle. Some of us have been working here for decades, so we know the routine by heart. The heat can be a problem for the flowers, so we are always spraying them with water. People come from all over the city to buy in bulk from this area. We don't have a lot of time for chatting because there is always a delivery to prepare. It’s tiring work being on your feet all day in the humidity. We just take it one day at a time and hope the flowers stay fresh until they’re sold. Most of the time we just eat our lunch sitting on the plastic crates because there are no chairs.