H.A Raja

Working in Bombay Bazar is a bit of a challenge because of how crowded it gets every single morning. The shop is called H.A Raja, which is just the family name we have used for years. It is not a very big space, so we have to stack things all the way up to the ceiling. You can hear the sounds of the market from inside all day long, people shouting and rickshaws honking their horns. I usually sit near the front to see who is coming in. The air in the bazar is always full of different smells, sometimes spices and sometimes just the dust from the street. We don’t have any big signs or bright lights to get people to look at us. Most of our regulars have been coming here since they were kids. It gets very hot in the afternoons and the small fan we have doesn't do much, but we stay open until late anyway. There is no real order to how the day goes, it just depends on who walks through the door. Sometimes we spend the whole morning just moving boxes around to find one small thing. It is a bit disorganized if you are used to big city malls, but for us in Bombay Bazar, it is just normal. We are just a local business trying to keep up with the daily rush without making too much of a mess of things.