Parakh Masale

You can find us at Shop No.33 in Whali Market. We are very close to the railway station in Ahmednagar, so you can hear the trains whistling and the announcements all day long. The market is always a bit chaotic with people rushing to catch their trains. Our shop is quite small, and we have to stack the boxes high up to make everything fit. We specialize in different kinds of masale, and we keep them in big glass jars so you can see the colors. The cumin is a dusty brown and the chili powder is a bright, deep red. We don't have a computer for billing; we just use a simple calculator and write out receipts by hand if someone asks. The floor is made of old stone and it’s a bit uneven in places. We spend a lot of time cleaning the glass jars because the fingerprints show up easily. It gets very hot in Ahmednagar during the summer, and the shop feels like an oven because there isn't much ventilation. We just keep the door wide open and hope for a breeze. Most of our customers are locals who have been coming to Whali Market for years. They know exactly where Shop No.33 is. We don't do anything special to get people in; they just come because they need their spices for the week. We stay open until late evening when the station crowds start to thin out.