Umiya Bangles

Our workshop is tucked away in Gala No. 4 inside the Mulji Bharwadi Compound. It is right in the Rawalpada area, not far from the Varada Vinayak Mandir. You can usually hear the bells from the temple when things get a bit quiet in the afternoon. Dahisar East is a very busy part of town, but our little corner is mostly about the actual work. We make bangles here. The place is often dusty and there is always the sound of tools hitting glass or metal. We don't have a big showroom with bright lights and fancy mirrors. It’s just a place where we sit down and work on different designs all day long. Sometimes the power goes out and we just have to wait it out, which is frustrating but that is just part of life here. Most of us who work here live nearby and just walk to the compound. It is a small team, maybe just three or four of us on a regular day. We get a lot of orders from local shops who want something specific for their customers. We don't use fancy machines for everything we do; a lot of it is just hands-on stuff that takes time. The compound can be a bit tricky for people to find if they aren't from around here, but once you find the Mandir, you are basically there. We’ve been in this gala for quite some time now. It is not a glamorous job, but we make sure the bangles look decent before they get sent out.