Krishnam Plywood

Krishnam Plywood is right at the busy crossing of B. B. Ganguly Street and Central Avenue in Bow Bazar. If you know that part of Kolkata, you know how crowded it gets with people and yellow taxis. Our shop is packed tight with sheets of plywood stacked from the floor almost to the ceiling. There is barely enough room for two people to walk side by side in the aisles. It always smells like glue and fresh-cut wood in here. We spend a lot of time moving these heavy boards around for customers who walk in from the street. Sometimes the wood is a bit dusty, so our shirts are always covered in fine sawdust. We don’t have a fancy showroom. It’s just us, the wood, and a small desk where we keep the ledger books. The fans on the ceiling don't do much when the humidity hits, but we’re used to it. Sometimes the traffic outside is so loud we can’t even hear the phone ringing. We get all kinds of people coming in, from carpenters looking for a specific thickness to homeowners who aren't quite sure what they need. We just pull out a sheet, show them the grain, and talk about the price. It’s a simple way to run things. We close up when the street lights come on and the traffic starts to thin out a little bit, then we do it all again tomorrow.