Mumbai Marble & Tiles

If you go down to Sai Dham Nagar, right across from the Charkop Bus Depot in Kandivali West, you’ll see our place. It’s easy to find because you can hear the buses idling all day long. We’ve got a big space filled with different types of marble and tiles. The yard is mostly open, so we’re at the mercy of the weather. When it’s sunny, the marble gets so bright it almost hurts your eyes to look at it. We’ve got heaps of scrap pieces in the back and big, heavy slabs leaning against the walls in the front. Moving these things takes a lot of effort and a couple of strong guys. We don’t have a showroom with air conditioning or anything like that. People just walk through the rows of stone and point out what they like. The ground is always a bit uneven and covered in sand. We spend a lot of our time measuring and marking pieces with pencils. It’s a noisy neighborhood, but we’re used to the sound of the depot. Most of our customers are locals who are doing up their flats in the nearby towers. We keep the gate open from morning till late evening. It’s a rough-and-ready kind of business. We don’t worry much about appearance, just about having enough stock for whoever walks in. Sometimes we sit on the edge of a marble block to eat our lunch while the trucks arrive with more inventory.