Soni Kirana Store

If you walk down Nayapura Khai Road, you will see Soni Kirana Store. We have been here for a while, selling the basic things people need for their kitchens and homes. It is mostly sacks of flour, jars of spices, and blocks of laundry soap. The floor is usually a bit dusty because of all the foot traffic coming in from the main road. I spend a lot of time weighing out lentils into small plastic bags for the evening rush. My fingers get dry and white from the flour bags. We open early in the morning because that is when the milk arrives and people want their tea leaves before starting work. It is a quiet kind of life, mostly talking to the same neighbors every day about the rising price of oil or how the heat is getting worse. Sometimes the supply truck is late because of a breakdown and we have to tell people to come back tomorrow for their favorite brand of soap. It gets crowded in the evenings when everyone is getting last-minute ingredients for dinner. We don't have fancy glass shelves, just old wooden ones that have been here since the day we opened. There is a small fan that rattles in the corner, but it helps when the heat gets bad in the afternoon. We keep a simple ledger for the regulars who pay their tab at the end of the month. It is just a basic shop on Khai Road where we try to keep enough stock.