Tirupati Cement Store

The store is located in Harihar Ganj, right on Cinema Road. If you know where the old cinema hall is, we are just a few steps away. It’s a loud part of town, especially when a movie is letting out and everyone spills onto the street. We deal with cement bags all day long. The dust is something you just learn to live with. It gets on your clothes and in your hair. We spend our time unloading trucks and stacking the bags in the back. It’s heavy work and our backs usually ache by the afternoon. We have a small desk where we keep the books, but it’s mostly covered in a layer of grey powder. People come in from the surrounding villages to get supplies for their small building projects. We talk about the weather and the price of materials while the laborers load up the carts. The road outside is always busy with rickshaws and motorbikes. Sometimes the dust from the store blows out onto the pavement, and we have to sweep it back in. It’s a straightforward life. We don’t have any fancy displays or anything like that. Just piles of cement and a phone that rings whenever a new load is coming in from the factory. We stay open until the sun goes down and the streetlights on Cinema Road flicker on. It’s a bit of a mess sometimes, but it’s how we work.