Pahadia Marble

Down here in Kankroli, specifically in the Dayal Colony area, our yard is mostly filled with big slabs of stone. Kishore Nagar is a place where you see a lot of this kind of work. The marble comes in and we have to move it around with the crane, which is always a bit of a process. There is a lot of white dust that gets on your clothes and your shoes, no matter how careful you are. We spend most of the morning checking the measurements and showing people the different patterns in the stone. Some of the slabs are really heavy and take a few men to handle properly. We have a small office with a fan and a desk where we keep all the records of who bought what. It gets loud when the cutting machines are running because of the water and the blades hitting the stone. Most of our days are spent talking to contractors or people building their first homes. They want to see how the light hits the marble. The yard is open to the air, so we’re always at the mercy of the weather. When it’s sunny, the marble reflects everything and it’s almost too bright to look at. We just keep stacking the pieces and waiting for the next truck to arrive from the quarries. It’s a steady life in a dusty part of town.