Aruna Sweet Shop

You can find Aruna Sweet Shop at No 66 in Pondy Bazaar, right in the middle of T Nagar. If you know Chennai, you know Pondy Bazaar is probably one of the busiest places you could ever be. There’s a constant stream of shoppers, street vendors, and cars. We open the doors early to set out the trays of sweets. The glass counters are always getting finger marks on them from people pointing at what they want, so we’re constantly wiping them down. The smell of ghee and sugar is pretty much stuck in our clothes by the end of the day. It’s a small shop, so it gets crowded quickly when more than four or five people come in at once. We don't have fancy air conditioning that works perfectly, so it can get a bit stuffy behind the counter. The staff is just a few of us who have been doing this for years. We know the regulars who come in for their daily snacks. The noise from the street is always there, especially the shouting of the cloth sellers nearby. Sometimes the rain floods the street a bit, and we have to put out bags to keep the water from coming in. It's just a simple life of weighing out laddu and barfi and packing them into cardboard boxes. It’s a lot of standing, and the floor is a bit sticky sometimes, but it’s our daily routine and we are used to the noise.