Harshita Kirana

If you walk down the street in Harshwardhan Nagar, Bhopal, you’ll find Harshita Kirana tucked between the other buildings. It is a humble place with plenty of things stacked up to the ceiling. We mostly carry the essentials like cooking oil, sugar, and various types of dal. The shop is a bit dark inside even during the day, so we keep the bulb over the counter turned on. It’s a family-run kind of thing, and there is usually someone sitting near the door to greet people. We get a lot of aunties coming in to compare the prices of different brands of flour. The shelves are made of old wood and they sometimes creak when I move the heavy tins around. Bhopal can be quite dusty, so I spend a good amount of time wiping down the packets of chips and the bottles of soda. It isn’t a high-end store, just a place for the local community to get their daily supplies without having to go too far. We’ve had the same metal scale for a long time, and it still works just fine for weighing out the loose sugar. Sometimes the electricity goes out and we have to use a flashlight to find the matchboxes or candles for the customers. It’s a quiet existence, just keeping the shop going day after day and making sure the neighbors have what they need.