Kartik Handicraft

Our place, Kartik Handicraft, is right at 14 Jagdish Marg, right in the middle of Jagdish Chowk. It’s a very busy intersection, and there’s always something going on outside our door. Cars, rickshaws, and cows all share the space, and it can get pretty loud during the day. We have a lot of items crammed into the shop, from floor to ceiling. It’s a bit of a maze inside, but we know where everything is. We don't have a big staff, just a few of us who have been doing this for years. We spend the morning moving things out onto the sidewalk so people can see the handicrafts as they walk to the temple. The air is always full of the smell of incense from the street and the old wood from our stock. We don’t use any fancy sales tactics. If someone walks in, they can look around as long as they want. Sometimes we’re too busy fixing something or unpacking a crate to notice right away, but we eventually get to them. The walls are covered in marks and old paint, but it’s a working shop, not a gallery. We’ve been at Jagdish Chowk for so long that we’ve become part of the background. It’s a lot of hard work keeping the place going in such a busy area, but we just take it one day at a time.