Long Life Luggage

We have been working out of this small room in Shiv Ashish Chawl for quite a while now. It is room number 6, right in Chawl No. 25, which is just off M. A. Road near Jacob Circle. The area is always busy with people coming and going towards the Mahalaxmi station. We deal mostly with all kinds of luggage, like big suitcases and smaller bags that people use for their daily travel. The space inside is pretty tight because of all the stock we keep piled up near the walls. Sometimes it gets a bit hard to move around when two or three people come in at once. Outside, the street noise from the traffic at Jacob Circle never really stops. We spend a lot of time checking zippers and making sure the handles on the bags are sturdy enough for the local trains. It is not a fancy store with air conditioning or anything, just a basic place where we do our work every day. Most of our neighbors in the chawl know us well, and we see the same familiar faces passing by the door every morning. We don’t have any big signs, just the name and the room number near Sai Palace. It is just a simple way to earn a living, selling bags to people who need them for work or for going back to their villages. The weather gets really humid here, so we keep the door open to get some air from the street.