Ayush Kirana

Ayush Kirana is another shop located on Hoshangabad Road in Bhopal, zip code 462011. My name is on the sign but it’s really just a family effort to keep everything running smoothly every day. We don’t have a massive warehouse, so we have to be careful about what we buy from the wholesalers. Most of our customers are the same people every week, coming in for their basic rations like flour, salt, and tea. It’s funny how you get to know what someone wants before they even say it. One neighbor always wants the same brand of soap, another only buys a specific type of rice. The traffic on Hoshangabad Road is constant and sometimes it’s hard for people to even pull over and park their scooters near the shop. Inside, it’s a bit cramped because I try to squeeze in as much variety as possible. Sometimes the sacks of grain sit on the floor for a day or two until I find time to put them into the smaller containers. It’s a lot of manual labor, lifting heavy bags and standing for ten hours a day. I don’t have any fancy computers or anything, just a simple notebook where I jot things down if I need to remember a price or an order. The walls could probably use a fresh coat of paint but for now, they are covered in shelves full of jars. It’s just a regular life running a kirana shop in this part of Bhopal.