Ferns N Petals

If you find yourself wandering near the Talwarkar Gym or the Gurudawara in Andheri East, you’ll likely stumble across Shop No 195. That’s where we are, right at Shiv Corner among the cloth merchants on the main road. It’s a busy corner of the world. Ferns N Petals here is a bit different from what you might expect. It’s not a sterile shop; there are bits of leaves on the floor and the smell of cut stems everywhere. We spend our mornings cutting thorns and checking the water buckets. It’s messy work. Your hands get stained and sometimes you get a little prick from a rose, but nobody complains. The traffic outside on the main road is constant, but inside it’s a bit calmer, even when we’re rushing to finish a bouquet for a last-minute walk-in. We don’t use fancy words to describe what we do. We just put plants and flowers together. Sometimes we run out of a certain color and have to explain that to a customer who really wanted yellow. Most people are understanding. We’ve been at Shiv Corner for a while now, and we’ve seen the neighborhood change, but the gym and the gurudawara are still the landmarks we tell people to look for. It’s just a small shop with a few people working hard to keep everything fresh. We don't have a grand vision, just a daily routine of stems and ribbons. It’s honest work and we enjoy the people we meet every day.