Ajit Bartan Store

Ajit Bartan Store is tucked away in Akal Market, specifically shops 15 and 16, right in the heart of Chaura Bazar. If you’ve ever been to Chaura Bazar, you know how packed and busy it gets, especially during the festival seasons. We’ve been selling kitchenware and utensils here for a long time. The store is filled from floor to ceiling with all kinds of pots, pans, and plates. It’s a bit of a maze inside, to be honest. We have to stack things carefully so nothing falls over when a customer walks through the narrow aisles. Most of our days are spent helping people find the right size of cooker or a nice set of plates for a gift. We see a lot of families coming in, sometimes three generations at once. It’s a very local feel. We don’t have a computer system for everything; we still do a lot of things the old-fashioned way with paper and pen. My father started this, and now we just keep the tradition going as best as we can. Akal Market is a bit of a tight squeeze, but it’s got a lot of character and history. We know the other shopkeepers around us well, and we often share tea in the afternoons when it’s not too busy. We don’t really do big sales or fancy ads. We just try to have what people need at a fair price. It’s just a regular shop in a busy market, and that’s fine by us. It's a living.