Sharma Sweet Shop

Sharma Sweet Shop is right here at Ghazipur Shop No 4. Every morning starts around 4 am when the milk delivery arrives at the back door. The air gets thick with the smell of sugar and frying oil pretty quickly. I’ve been working in this shop since I was a teenager, and now I’m the one managing the staff. We have a few big iron kadhais that are almost never empty. People stop by on their way to work to grab some breakfast or take some sweets home for their families. The glass counters are always getting smudged with fingerprints, so we have to wipe them down constantly. It’s a small shop and it gets very hot in the back where the cooking happens. We don’t really use fancy machines; most things are still done by hand just like they were years ago. My father sits at the cash counter usually, talking to the regulars who have been coming here for decades. During festivals, it gets so busy we barely have time to sit down or eat our own lunch. We run out of things quickly on those days. It’s just a local sweet shop where we try to keep things fresh every single day. We don’t really care about being the biggest or anything, just about making sure the food is okay for the people who buy it from us.