Subhash Stores

Our shop is right at 77 Ranipura. It’s a very busy street, especially because we are so close to the Standard Stationery Mart. You can hear the rickshaws and people talking all day long from inside Subhash Stores. We have a lot of stuff packed into this space. The shelves are full from the floor to the ceiling, and sometimes it's hard to find a place to stand when we get a big delivery. We don’t have a computer system to track everything; we just use old-fashioned ledgers and our own memory. It works well enough for us. Most of our customers are locals who have been coming here since they were kids. We know their names and what they usually need before they even ask. The floor is made of old wood and it creaks when you walk towards the back. We open the shutters early in the morning and stay until late in the evening. It gets dusty because of the market outside, so we are always dusting things off. My brother and I run the place, and we don't really have any staff in the usual sense. It's just a family business where we work hard and try to keep things organized. We don't have a sign that lights up at night, just a simple painted one. It’s an honest living and we like being part of the neighborhood here in Ranipura. It feels like home after all this time.