Magadh Fancy Stores

At Magadh Fancy Stores, we sit right on the G T Road in Shibpur. Our address is 275, and if you know Howrah, you know how much traffic passes through this road every minute. It’s loud and there is always a lot of smoke from the buses, but it brings plenty of people to our door. We call it a fancy store because we keep things like bangles, ribbons, hair clips, and small gift items alongside some stationery. It is a bit of a mix of everything. I spend the mornings dusting the glass cases because the road grime settles on everything very quickly. The shop isn't very large, so we have to use the height of the walls to store our boxes. Sometimes I need a stool to reach the stuff at the top. The light inside is a bit dim because we don't have many windows, but we have enough bulbs to see what we are doing. It’s a lot of small sales—someone wanting a single pen, another person looking for a specific color of sewing thread. We’ve been in Shibpur for a long time, so we know the local families and what they usually look for during the festival seasons. It’s not an easy job standing on your feet all day, especially when the humidity is high and the air is thick. But we keep the door open and wait for the next customer to walk in and browse the shelves.