Amolak Ram Aggarwal & Sons

Our place is right in Malleshwaram, near the Manan Society at 33/1. It’s been here for a long time, and you can definitely tell by the way the shelves look. My father and his brothers started this, and now we just keep the routine going every day. The shop opens up early because the morning crowd in this part of town is usually the busiest. We spend the first hour just dusting things off and checking the inventory that came in late the night before. Being near the society means we see the same faces every morning. It’s a lot of 'hello' and 'how is the family' while we work. The space is a bit cramped because we try to keep a lot of stock on hand. Sometimes boxes get stacked almost to the ceiling, and you have to be careful walking through the middle aisle. There is a small desk in the back where we handle all the paperwork, usually with a cup of tea that’s gone cold. The building is old, so the walls have some cracks and the paint is peeling in the corners. It doesn’t bother us much. We know where everything is, even if it looks a bit messy to someone walking in for the first time. Traffic on the road outside gets loud in the afternoon, but inside we just keep busy with the orders. It’s just how things go here. We stop for a lunch break at two and then stay open until late evening.