National Kirana Store

National Kirana Store is located on Khatipura Road in the Jhotwara area, specifically near Jaswa. We occupy units 34-35, which gives us a bit more room than some of the other shops nearby. Even with the extra space, things are always piled up. We keep a lot of bulk items like big bags of rice and large tins of cooking oil. I spend a lot of my morning checking the expiry dates on the milk and yogurt containers in the small fridge we have. The traffic on Khatipura Road has become very heavy over the last few years, so there is always a lot of noise and dust coming from the street. I have a small stool where I sit when there are no customers, but that doesn't happen very often. People from the local colonies come here for their monthly rations. We have to do a lot of heavy lifting, especially when the grain sacks arrive from the mandi. My shirt is usually covered in a bit of white flour by lunchtime. We don't really do any advertising or anything like that; people just know we are here. Sometimes the neighbors stop by just to chat for a bit while they wait for me to weigh out their pulses. It’s a simple neighborhood shop and we try to keep enough stock so that nobody has to go home empty-handed. It is just a regular job for us.