Inside the bylanes of Karol Bagh, New Delhi, is Gaffar Market — a world of its own. Rumour has it that there is no device that cannot be repaired here.
Repairing means two things at Gaffar: substituting the faulty electrical part with a cheap Chinese copy or replacing it with a working part from an old refurbished device. It is how things have worked for years.
“Almost 90 per cent of the parts we use while repairing phones come from China. Some parts are original — in the sense that they are cannibalised from old, dead phones of the same