Jai Prakash Painter

Nithari in Sector 31 is a crowded place, especially near the Mangal Bazar. Our spot is right opposite that market, near Madan Pan Bhandar. If you are looking for us, just look for the shop with the paint-stained door. We do a lot of house painting and work around the neighborhood. Most of our time is spent on ladders or mixing colors in plastic buckets. It’s a messy business, and I usually have spots of white or yellow on my clothes by lunch. The Mangal Bazar days are the craziest because the street gets so packed you can barely move a ladder through the crowd. We keep our brushes soaking in jars and the shelves are full of different cans. It’s a small shop, mainly for keeping our supplies and meeting people who need work done. We don't spend much time sitting down. Usually, we are out at someone's house or a small shop trying to get a wall finished before the sun goes down. The smell of paint is something you just get used to after a few years. It’s honest work. Sometimes the rain stops us for a few days, so we just hang around the shop and clean the brushes. It isn't a fancy setup, just a local place where we’ve been for quite some time now. My hands are almost never clean, but that is just part of the painting life.