Khetiya Stores

The store is right in the middle of Madhupura Market in Chembur. It’s number 37 on the row. If you know the market, you know it gets incredibly crowded on the weekends. We open up pretty early, usually before the sun is fully up, to get the stock sorted out. The shelves are packed with all sorts of things, and sometimes it’s hard to find exactly what you’re looking for because we keep getting new stuff in. There’s a specific smell to the place, a mix of grains and spices and old wood. We don’t have a computer system for everything, so a lot of the counting is still done by hand in a big notebook. The floor is stone and stays cool even when it’s baking outside. We have a lot of regular customers who have been coming to us since their parents were the ones doing the shopping. It’s a loud environment with people shouting prices and trucks unloading nearby. We spend a lot of time just moving bags around and making sure things are in the right spot. It’s a simple life, running a shop in a place like this. You see the same faces every day and you learn everyone’s business whether you want to or not. When the monsoon hits, we have to put up the plastic sheets to keep the rain from blowing into the front and soaking the bags.