Sri Guru Agarbatti Enterprises

Sri Guru Agarbatti Enterprises is out in Dankuni Monoharpur. It’s a place that usually smells like sandalwood or jasmine, depending on what we are working on that day. The building is simple, more like a workshop than an office. We have rows of tables where the work gets done, and there’s always a fine dust from the materials we use. Outside, Dankuni is industrial but it has a bit of a quiet feel compared to the city. We spend our hours checking the sticks and making sure they are packed right into the boxes. It’s a lot of manual work, and our hands usually end up covered in the dark powder by the end of the shift. We have a small area where we keep the finished goods ready to go out. The roof is corrugated metal, so when it rains, it’s really loud and we can barely hear each other talk. We usually have a radio playing somewhere in the background to keep things lively. It’s not the kind of place you’d find in a glossy magazine, but it’s where we make our living. Most of the people working here are from the nearby areas, so we all know each other well. We just focus on getting the orders ready and keeping the piles of agarbatti from falling over. It is a steady rhythm that we follow every day from morning until the sun goes down.