My mother woke me up early in the morning as she was leaving for her work in an industry. It was a normal working day and I too had to leave immediately to work in the bangle factory. I was in a hurry as I was running out of time.

The factory where I work is in the industrial estate area of Goregaon East. After leaving the job in a renowned bangle factory, my boss started his own business by building this factory in the self-built settlement where I live in. Only one road connects the settlement to the western express highway. It is a small-scale factory which is involved in the making of plastic bangles. The bangles are manufactured everyday as per the decided target by our boss.

One or two from twelve of us had always been late to come the factory and that day it was me. However, our boss did not take any action keeping in mind that we are still teenagers who lack time management. As I reached the factory, I was extremely happy to hear that the day’s target is just 110 boxes which we would complete till afternoon easily. We all started working with the excitement to have a great playtime in the evening.

 The factory is a G+1 structure. The ground floor consisting of 2 galas as manufacturing area, one gala as a storage for final packaged boxes and one gala as the owner’s office. The first floor consists of one gala as printing area, one as packaging area and one as a sorting area. The manufacturing area needs to be isolated as it has machines and raw materials. How suffocating is to be there due to the hot air released by the machines! All the galas in the factory have very less light and ventilation within them. We all lack interaction among us by working in separate galas.

Soon the bangles were manufactured, sorted, printed, and then packed in the final boxes. We had completed the day’s target very quickly and were set free. We have a special bond with kids that play in the surrounding streets of the settlement. Often after our work, we mix with them and find places where we could play different outdoor games like kabaddi, throwball, Lagori, dodge ball, etc., generally the games which can be played in small pockets of spaces that get formed at a junction of streets or in-between houses. Extremely small pockets of space are occupied by playing board games. The sitting area for the audience gets created by the drums, tyres and all other available objects in those pockets. Many times, we only need a place to sit together and have a good chill time by interacting with each other.

Sometimes, I wonder why can’t my factory have such pocket like spaces within it where we could have such playtime without having a need to find it everyday in the settlement. The factory which makes our bond with the outside kids stronger, where they can play anytime and we work with the excitement to play with them. This excitement can boost the speed of our work and we will try completing our target even faster! Anyways, the linear arrangement of the existing factory makes it an undesirable place to work. Intervention in it to make the factory which affords more interaction among us as well as with the kids outside would be a great idea. The factory which looks like a play space from outside and also has interactive working space inside would make the existing workspace a desirable one.