Fruit Land

Fruit Land is situated in Ghatkopar East on Vallabh Baug Lane, right near Kesarwala Ud. It is an open-air kind of setup where we display whatever is in season. In the summer, the whole place smells like mangoes, and in the winter, we have rows of apples and oranges stacked up. We get our stock very early in the morning from the big wholesale markets. It takes a couple of hours just to unload the crates and arrange the fruit so it looks decent on the wooden stands. We have to be careful about the heat because it can spoil the produce pretty fast. People walking down the lane stop by to pick up a kilo of this or that on their way home. We use old-fashioned scales to weigh everything. Sometimes the crows try to take a peck at the fruit, so we have to keep an eye out. The lane is usually crowded with people shopping for their daily meals. We do not have any fancy packaging, just the regular bags and sometimes some old newspaper for padding. It is a lot of standing around and talking to customers about the prices, which seem to change every week depending on the rain. We try to keep the bad pieces out of the display, but occasionally one slips through. It is just honest work selling fresh food to the neighborhood.