A. K. Motiwala

A. K. Motiwala is located at 145, Lohar Chawl, which is one of the busiest spots you can imagine. If you’ve ever been to this part of Mumbai, you know it’s a maze of narrow streets and shops packed tight against each other. Our shop has been around for a long time, and the wooden counters are worn smooth from years of people leaning on them. We don’t have much space, so we have to be very organized with how we store things on the high shelves. Every morning, we roll up the metal shutter and start the day by cleaning the display cases. Lohar Chawl is famous for being a place where you can find almost anything if you look hard enough, and we like being part of that history. It’s noisy and crowded, and sometimes it takes ten minutes just to walk a few meters down the street, but that’s just life here. We get all kinds of customers, from people who know exactly what they want to folks who just want to browse and talk for a while. We don't use any fancy sales tactics or anything like that. We just show the items, talk about the price, and let the customer decide. At the end of the day, we lock up the shutters and join the sea of people heading toward the station. It’s a tiring way to make a living, but it’s what we know and we've done it for ages.