Prakash Namkeen Bhandar

The heat from the big frying vats is the first thing you notice when you walk into Prakash Namkeen Bhandar. Agra Gate Nasiya Road is a busy stretch, and we’re right in the middle of it. Every morning starts with lighting the burners and getting the oil ready. It takes a while. We spend hours just packing different snacks into those clear plastic bags. My hands usually smell like spices by the end of the shift. We don’t have fancy displays, just glass jars and steel bins filled with whatever we made fresh that day. Sometimes the fan makes a clicking sound that drives me crazy, but it’s too hot to turn it off. Customers come in looking for something to eat with their tea, and they usually stand around talking for a few minutes while we weigh things out. The scale we use is a bit old, but it still works fine if you balance it right. Nasiya Road gets really dusty in the summer, so we’re always cleaning the glass. It’s a lot of repetitive work, scooping, weighing, and sealing. Sometimes we run out of something popular by lunchtime and people get a bit annoyed, but that’s just how it goes. We just tell them to come back tomorrow. At night, we sweep the floor, lock up the metal shutters, and go home tired. It is a lot of work but it keeps us busy.