Manish Provision Store

Manish Provision Store is down in Shahzadi Mandi, which is part of the Sadar Bazaar area in Agra. Being in Sadar, we are near all the action, though we mostly serve the people who actually live and work in the mandi. The shop has been around for a long time and the walls could probably use a fresh coat of paint. We have rows of jars filled with different kinds of pulses and grains. It’s the kind of place that smells like coriander and turmeric as soon as you walk in. I spend my mornings weighing out portions and putting them into smaller bags. We don’t have fancy barcode scanners or anything; we just know the prices by heart. The street outside is narrow and can get quite congested with carts and pedestrians. Sometimes the monkeys from the nearby trees try to see if we’ve left anything out, so we have to keep an eye on the entrance. Our customers are mostly regulars who have been coming to us for years. They like to chat about the local news while I pack their groceries. It’s a bit of an old-fashioned way of doing things, but it works for us and our neighbors. We don’t have much in the way of decoration, just a calendar on the wall and the merchandise itself. It’s a busy, dusty, and honest little shop in a very old part of Agra.