Umar International

You can find us over at Crawford Market in Shed No 4, which is right beside that Chiko Building most people know. If you’ve ever been to Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market, you already know how loud and crowded it gets every single day. That is basically our daily life here. We spend the whole day in the shed dealing with all sorts of items coming in and going back out. It is a pretty tight space to work in, but we make it work somehow. Some days the heat in the market is really something else, so we have to keep the fans going all the time just to stay comfortable. We are not some big corporate office with air conditioning and glass walls. It is just a market stall where we handle international stuff. My family has been around this market for a long long time, so we know the routine. We deal with lots of different people every day. Some are regular customers and some are just passing through the market looking for things. There is always some tea being passed around and someone shouting about a delivery arriving. It can be a bit of a mess sometimes, especially when the monsoon rain starts and everyone crowds into the sheds to stay dry. But we actually like being in the middle of all that noise. It is honest work and it keeps us on our feet all day. We don’t do any advertising; people just find us by walking through the market.