Satnarain Button Store

If you’ve ever been to Sadar Bazar, you know how crazy it gets. Our shop is 31-A in the Swadeshi Market, and honestly, some days I don't know how we fit everything in here. It’s buttons everywhere. Big ones, small ones, wooden ones, plastic ones. They’re in jars, boxes, and some are just loose in drawers we haven’t opened in months. People come in looking for one specific type and we usually spend ten minutes digging it out. Swadeshi Market is an old place, and you can feel it in the walls and the narrow aisles. It gets hot in the summer, really hot, and we just drink a lot of cold water and keep serving the customers. There’s always someone shouting outside or a cart trying to squeeze past the door. We’ve been doing this for years, so we’re used to the noise and the dust. It’s a lot of counting. One, two, three, all the way up to a gross. My hands are usually a bit dirty from handling all the metal fasteners and zips. We don't have a fancy computer system; we just write things down in the ledger and keep moving. It’s a practical business for a practical part of town. We just show up, open the shutters, and start the day like everyone else in Sadar. It is a lot of small things to keep track of, but we manage.