Chaurisia Pan Bhandar

If you know Lakshmi Nagar, you know how Mangal Bazar gets on the busy days. Our shop is right in the middle of all that chaos. It’s a tiny space, honestly, mostly filled with the smell of gulkand and fresh leaves. We open up early to set out the jars of fennel and cherries. There’s a lot of shouting from the vegetable sellers nearby, and the crowd never really stops until late at night. We don't have a lot of room to move around behind the counter, so everything has to be within arm's reach. The wooden boards we use for cutting have seen better days, but they do the job. We see a lot of students and office goers who just want a quick break from their day. Most of them have been coming here for years. We don't do anything flashy. It's just about having the right stuff on the leaf and folding it properly. Sometimes we have to shout over the noise of the traffic just to hear what a customer wants. The counter gets messy with bits of supari and cloth scraps, so we’re always wiping it down. It’s hot in the summer because we’re right on the street, but we’ve got a small fan that keeps us going. It’s just a small part of the bazaar life.