Mohan Stores

If you walk down Sampige Road in Malleshwaram, you know how busy things can get, especially on the weekends. Our shop, Mohan Stores, is right in the middle of all that noise and movement in Bangalore. The road outside is always full of cars and people carrying shopping bags from the market. Inside the store, things are a bit calmer, though we are always moving something around. We have those high wooden cupboards that go way up, and I often have to use a small stool to reach the stuff at the top. The floor is made of old stone, and it stays cool even when the weather outside is warm. We keep everything from cooking oil to cleaning powders and those big tins of biscuits that everyone likes. Sometimes the smell of jasmine from the flower sellers outside drifts into the shop, which is nice. We spend a lot of time checking our handwritten registers and making sure we have enough change in the cash box. It is a lot of standing around and waiting for customers, then suddenly five people walk in at once and it gets hectic. We don’t have fancy lights or big displays, just the basic things stacked where we can find them. The rain in Bangalore often makes people run into the shop to wait it out, so we end up having long chats about nothing in particular while they wait for the clouds to clear and the traffic to settle down.