Maalaxmi Namkeen

If you walk down the lanes in Shakarpur, you’ll find us at D-120/C. It’s a busy part of Delhi, and the noise from the street never really stops. Inside, we’re usually busy with the snacks. Maalaxmi Namkeen is basically just a small operation where we fry things up and get them into bags. The smell of oil and spices is pretty much stuck in our clothes by the end of the day. We don’t have a fancy showroom or anything like that. It’s more about the kitchen and the packing area. We start pretty early in the morning to beat the worst of the heat, getting the stoves going and checking the inventory. Shakarpur can be a bit of a maze, so sometimes the delivery guys get lost finding our door. We’ve got bags of ingredients stacked up against the walls most of the time. It gets a bit cramped when we’re doing a big batch of sev or mixture, but we manage to find space. We don’t spend much time on the computer, mostly we’re on our feet. Our neighbors are used to the sound of the machinery running throughout the day. It’s just honest work, making snacks that people like to eat with their tea. Sometimes we run out of stock faster than we thought, and then we have to scramble to make more. That’s just the way it goes here in the shop. We like the work.