Shiv Shakar Bartan Bhandar

Shiv Shakar Bartan Bhandar has been sitting here at 4/130 on Kiran Path in Mansarovar for a good bit now. If you walk inside, you will see steel plates, cookers, and tawas stacked up everywhere. It can get a little cramped because we try to keep a lot of variety for the local families. We mostly deal with everyday kitchen stuff that people actually use. It is not one of those big showrooms with bright lights; it is just a regular shop where the floor is stone and the shelves are metal. Sometimes a customer comes in looking for a specific size of a lid for an old pressure cooker, and we spend ten minutes digging through boxes to find the right one. The neighborhood knows us well enough. Most mornings are spent unpacking new boxes of spoons or glasses that come in from the suppliers. We don't have a big team, just a few of us making sure everything is in its place. When it gets hot in the summer, the ceiling fan just moves the warm air around, but we stay busy. People come here when they are setting up a new kitchen or when a bucket breaks and they need a sturdy metal one. We keep things simple and talk to everyone who walks through the door like they are neighbors, because mostly they are. It is just a steady, local business where we know which brand of steel lasts the longest.