S. P. Shah & Sons

Dawa Bazar is always a crowded place, and we are right in the middle of it. Our shop is No. 10 in Earth House, on Babu Genu Road. If you know the area off Princess Street, you know how busy it gets with all the handcarts and people rushing around. S. P. Shah & Sons has been part of this landscape for a very long time. It’s a family-run kind of place where things are done the old way. We have tall wooden shelves that go all the way to the ceiling, filled with all sorts of things. You usually need a ladder to reach the top rows. It’s a bit dusty and the lighting could be better, but it has a lot of character. We spend our time talking to customers who have been coming to us for decades. There is a lot of shouting from the street outside, but inside we just focus on the orders. We write a lot of things down by hand in big ledgers because that’s how we’ve always done it. It’s not a shiny new store with glass counters. It’s a working warehouse and shop that feels lived in. We know the other shopkeepers on the road and we often share a cup of tea when the morning rush dies down. It’s a lot of hard work keeping track of everything, but it is what we know.