Pioneer Furniture

If you walk behind Shreeji Restaurant in Andheri West, you'll find us on the first floor of the Om Heera Panna building. It’s a bit of a climb with heavy wood, but we manage. Shivaji Nagar is always crowded, and the noise from the street stays with us all day long. We spend most of our time surrounded by sawdust and the smell of varnish. My hands are usually covered in some kind of glue or polish by the time lunch rolls around. Most people find us because they were already getting food nearby and saw the sign. We have a lot of half-finished chairs and table legs sitting in the corners. It’s not the most organized looking place, but we know where everything is. Moving furniture up and down that staircase is the hardest part of the job, honestly. Sometimes the narrow hallway gets blocked when a new shipment of timber arrives. We try to keep things moving, but wood takes time to work with. It's a small crew here, mostly just a few of us who have been doing this for years. We don't really do much talking when the saws are running because you wouldn't hear anything anyway. In the evenings, we sweep up all the shavings and lock up. It’s a simple routine that repeats every day here in the heart of Andheri.