J H Stainless

We are right in the middle of the chaos at Chandewadi, Crawford Market. If you know the market, you know it is always packed with people and the noise is constant. Our shop is full of stainless steel items, mostly things for the kitchen like plates, pots, and tiffins. We have them stacked high on the shelves and sometimes it feels like the whole pile might come down if you pull the wrong one. It is a very busy life here and we are constantly talking to customers and trying to hear them over the noise of the street vendors outside. The floor is concrete and our feet hurt by the end of the day from standing so much. We don't have much space to move around but we make it work. Most of our day is spent unpacking new stock or wrapping up things in old newspaper for customers to take home. Crawford Market is a historical place but for us, it is just where we work every single day. We see tourists and locals and everyone in between. It gets very hot in the afternoons and the small fan we have doesn't do much. We’ve been here long enough to remember how the market used to look years ago. It’s a lot of hard work and there’s always something to do, whether it’s cleaning the smudge marks off the steel or checking the inventory.