Khan Kirana & General Store

Khan Kirana & General Store has been sitting here on Vinay Nagar Road in Gaon Agvanpur for quite a while now. Sector 37 in Faridabad has changed a lot, but this little corner stays pretty much the same. We open up when the sun is barely up because the people heading to work need their tea leaves or milk before they catch the bus. The shop is full of sacks of grain and rows of plastic containers. It’s not the most organized place in the world, but I know exactly where everything is kept. If you need a specific type of spice or just a new broom, it’s probably buried somewhere on the back shelf. The dust from the road is a constant battle, and I’m always wiping down the counter with an old rag. We get a lot of noise from the traffic on the main road, but you get used to it after a few weeks. The neighbors come in to chat as much as they do to shop, which makes the long hours go by a bit faster. Sometimes the electricity goes out and we just sit in the shade of the doorway until it comes back. It is a simple life, just selling what people need and making sure we don’t run out of the basics. We don’t do any big advertising, just the sign out front that’s seen better days.