Sun Departmental Store

Sun Departmental Store sits on Kotla Mubarakpur Gurudwara Road 1086, and it’s been there for a while now. The shelves are packed tight with everything from bags of lentils to bars of soap and those little packets of biscuits children like. It’s a bit of a squeeze when more than three people are inside at once. You have to navigate around the crates of cooking oil sitting on the floor. We get the bread delivery early in the morning, and that’s usually when the first neighbors show up. It’s a lot of reaching up for jars on high shelves and counting out change. The Gurudwara is right nearby, so we hear the sounds from there all day long, which is actually quite nice. Sometimes the inventory gets a bit mixed up, and we have to spend the evening sorting through the spice packets. We don't have a computer system that does everything; we mostly just remember where things are. The front door stays open to let some air in, but it also lets in all the street dust. We have a small stool behind the counter, but nobody really gets to sit on it for long. People come in to chat as much as they do to buy sugar or tea. It’s a simple neighborhood shop where we know most of the faces that walk in. It’s just daily life for us.