Saradamoyee Steel Emporium

Being right near the Central Bus Stand in Kishore Nagar means it is always loud. You can hear the conductors shouting destinations all day long. At Saradamoyee Steel Emporium, we spend a lot of time moving heavy pieces of metal around. The floor is concrete and has a lot of scratches from the steel bars. Purba Midnapur gets quite hot in the summer, and the shop feels like an oven sometimes because of all the metal. We have a few workers who handle the loading and unloading. They wear thick gloves, but their hands are still rough. Sometimes the trucks can't get close because of the buses blocking the road. We have to carry things further than we’d like. The paperwork is kept in a blue plastic folder that’s seen better days. Customers come in looking for specific lengths of pipe or sheets, and we go out back to see what’s left. If we don’t have it, we tell them to come back next Tuesday. There isn’t much decoration on the walls, just a calendar from three years ago and a small mirror. We drink a lot of water throughout the shift. It’s a lot of physical work, and by the evening, everyone is pretty tired. The shop stays open until the last bus leaves the stand, which is usually quite late. My cousin brings us snacks in the afternoon to keep us going until the end of the shift.