Raju Shaw General Store

We are right on Jessore Road in the Green Park area of Kolkata. It is a very busy street with cars and buses going by all day. The shop is tucked into a spot where people walking home from work can easily grab a few things. We carry the basic essentials that a household needs daily. Tea leaves, sugar, matchboxes, and snacks are our biggest sellers. Raju spends most of his time behind the desk checking the accounts or talking to the suppliers. It’s a small family operation. We don't have a lot of help, so if there's a line, people usually just wait a minute. The walls have some old paint and the floor is concrete, but it stays clean enough. We’ve seen this part of Kolkata change a lot over the years, but the shop stays pretty much the same. People come in to chat as much as they do to buy stuff. We like hearing the local news from the neighbors. It feels good to be part of the community here. Sometimes the rains make it hard for people to reach us, but we stay open anyway. There is no website or anything like that, just this physical shop where you can see what you are buying. We just keep doing our work every day and hope for the best. Usually, we close up late at night after the last bus passes by. It's a long day but that's how it is for us.