Praveen Food Stores

If you walk into Ghandhi Market in Modi Nagar and look for store number 18, you will find Praveen Food Stores. It is a typical local grocery spot where we keep things like big bags of rice, lentils, and all the spices you might need for cooking at home. The shop is not very large, so we have to stack the crates pretty high to fit everything in. It smells like turmeric and dried chilies most of the time, which I have grown to like over the years. We get a lot of people from the neighborhood who come in every few days for their sugar or tea leaves. I know most of the faces by now, and we usually talk about the weather or how the prices of onions are going up again. It is a bit cramped inside, especially when we get a new delivery and the sacks are sitting on the floor waiting to be opened. We don’t have a website or any fancy checkout machines. I just write things down and pack the items in bags for people. Gandhi Market is always crowded, so there is a lot of shouting and horns honking outside the door, but inside it is just about getting the shopping done. Sometimes the kids come in for a single piece of candy after school. We keep the doors open from morning until late evening because that is when people need their supplies. It is just a normal, busy food store for the people living around here.