Laxmi Mawa Bhandar

If you go to Kali Bawri and find house number 15, you will find Laxmi Mawa Bhandar. The air around our place usually smells like boiling milk and heavy sugar. We spend most of our hours standing over big iron vats, stirring the milk until it slowly thickens into mawa. It is hot work, especially in the summer months when the sun hits the roof, but it is what we do. We start very early, often before the sun is even up, because the fresh milk arrives at that time. Everything is done by hand, from carrying the heavy metal cans to packing the finished product into plastic crates. We don't have any big machines to do the stirring for us, so it takes a lot of energy. Our floors are usually a bit damp from the cleaning we do after every batch is finished. Customers come in looking for fresh mawa for their homes or for making sweets for a big wedding in the family. We weigh everything out on an old scale that has been with us for many years. It is a small space, and it gets crowded when more than two people are inside at once. We don't have a fancy display case; we just show the product as it is, fresh and warm. The walls have some stains from the steam, and the ceiling is high to let the heat out. We know all the regular milk suppliers who come to our door.