Ambika Cargo

We are located in Room Number 3 on the first floor. The building is Nandlal J, right in the Masjid area. We are actually above the Laxmi Vilas Hotel. You can usually smell the food from downstairs. It makes us hungry all day. Cargo is a tough business in this part of Mumbai. The roads are so narrow. We spend a lot of time coordinating with the loaders. Boxes come and go all the time. Our office is small and filled with papers. There are files everywhere on the floor. We have one old computer that we use for the manifests. Sometimes the electricity goes out and we just have to sit and wait. Masjid is always loud with carts and people shouting. We are used to it. We handle a lot of different packages. Some go far away and some are just local. We have to check the weights and the labels carefully. If one box goes to the wrong place, it’s a big problem. We don’t have a lot of workers, just a few of us who know the routine. We drink a lot of tea to stay awake during the night shifts. It’s not a glamorous job, but the goods have to move. We’ve been in this room for years now. The walls need a new coat of paint, but we never have the time to stop. We just keep writing the slips and moving crates.