Lucky Shoe

If you’ve ever walked through the mess of Burrabazar, you probably know where M.G. Road is. We’re right there at 5A/4, at the crossing, which is basically the busiest spot you can imagine in Kolkata. It gets really loud outside with the horns and the people shouting, but we’re used to it by now. Lucky Shoe has been in this spot for quite a bit. The shop isn’t huge, and sometimes the boxes are stacked so high you can barely see the ceiling. We spend our days mostly pulling out different sizes for people who are in a hurry to get somewhere else. It’s a lot of opening boxes, showing the leather, and putting them back when they don’t fit quite right. The floor gets a bit dirty because of all the foot traffic from the street, but that’s just how it is in this part of town. We keep a fan running all day to deal with the Kolkata heat, though it mostly just moves the warm air around. There’s no big corporate team behind us, just a few of us here making sure the shelves don’t stay empty for too long. We grab tea from the stall nearby and watch the crowd go by whenever there’s a quiet minute. It’s a simple shop at a busy junction, just selling shoes to anyone who stops by while they're navigating the market and trying to find something comfortable.