Pen Worker'S

You can find us at Palkiwala House, which is at number 648 on Jaganath S. Shankar Road. This part of Dhobhi Talao has so much history, and you can feel it in the old walls of the building. We’ve been working with pens here for a very long time. It’s a small shop, filled with the smell of old ink and the sound of nibs scratching on paper. We spend a lot of our time fixing pens that people thought were gone for good. It’s delicate work, and your fingers usually end up stained with blue or black ink by the end of the shift. The street outside is always loud with cars and people rushing to the station, but inside it’s a bit quieter. We have rows of drawers filled with spare parts from pens that aren't even made anymore. It’s a bit cluttered, but we know where everything is. People bring in fountain pens their grandfathers owned, hoping we can make them write again. We don't have a computer system for everything; a lot of it is just kept in ledgers or in our heads. It’s an old-fashioned way of doing things, but it works for us. We just sit at the workbench and focus on the task at hand. The light isn't always the best, but we have our desk lamps. It’s a steady kind of life in a very busy part of town.