Kulwant Singh Noor

Mayapuri is a loud place, and our shop in Block-D is right in the middle of it all. At shop number 53, we’ve been working for years under the name Kulwant Singh Noor. It’s mostly metalwork and machinery stuff around here. You’ll hear the sound of hammers and grinders from the moment you step into the block. We don’t have a fancy office with air conditioning; it’s just the shop floor and a small desk where we keep the ledger. Most days we are busy with repairs or looking for specific parts that someone needs for an old machine. It’s dusty and noisy, but we like the work. We’ve lived and worked in this part of Delhi for a long time, so we know most of the other shop owners on our street. We aren’t big on talking ourselves up. If we can fix something, we’ll tell you. If we can’t, we’ll tell you that too. It’s a simple way of doing things that has worked for us so far. Sometimes the power goes out or the street gets blocked by a big truck, but we just work around it. People come to us because they know we’ve been here forever and we know our trade. We don’t use any high-tech systems for our records, just old-fashioned notebooks and memory. It’s a humble life here in Mayapuri, but it’s ours and we take it one day at a time. The work is hard on the hands, but it feels right.