Gubba Lal Bahadur Shastri

Venkateswara House in Hyderguda is where we spend our days, and it has a very specific feel to it. It is an old-fashioned sort of place where the hallways are a bit dark and the air always feels a little still. We are right in the middle of everything in Hyderabad, so the noise from the road is a constant background sound. Our office is filled with the smell of old paper and the ink from the printers. We spend a lot of time checking ledgers and making sure the stock counts are right. It is not the kind of place with bright lights or modern furniture. Instead, we have heavy chairs and big wooden tables that have been here since we started. Customers come in and out, mostly people we have known for years, so there is a lot of handshaking and asking about family. The afternoons can get pretty hot, and the fans just move the warm air around, but we are used to it by now. We usually have a pile of samples on the counter that need to be sorted. It is a lot of routine work, like filing papers and making phone calls to suppliers who are often late. We do not bother much with making the place look polished. We just focus on the task in front of us. It is a bit dusty and the files are stacked high, but we know exactly where everything is when we need to find it.