Srinivas Foods

Down on Villiyanur Main Road, things stay pretty busy. Srinivas Foods is located at number 137 in the Nellithope area of Pondicherry. If you've been around here, you know the 605005 zip code gets a lot of dust from the road. We spend a good chunk of our morning just dusting off the shelves and making sure everything is where it should be. It’s an old building, and the walls could probably use a fresh coat of paint, but it stays cool inside even when the sun is beating down on the asphalt outside. We stock all kinds of local items. Most of the people who come in are neighbors who have lived in Nellithope for decades. We know their kids and their grandkids by name. It’s not a supermarket with trolleys and bright lights. It’s just a shop where you walk in and tell us what you need. Sometimes the bags of rice are stacked so high you can't see the back wall. We try to keep the accounts straight in a big ledger book, though sometimes we fall behind on the paperwork. The rain in Pondicherry can be heavy, and when it pours, the water splashes right up to the doorstep. We just pull the shutters down a bit and wait it out. It’s a simple way to spend the day, really. We don't have any fancy signs, just the name above the door.