Atul Provision Stores

If you live near Chinchwadagaon on Sv Road, you’ve probably walked past Atul Provision Stores a hundred times. We’re tucked right in there, and the shop is usually packed from floor to ceiling with bags of rice, soaps, and whatever else people need for their kitchens. It’s a small space, so you have to be careful not to knock things over when you’re walking through the aisles. The Sv Road traffic is always loud, and the honking never really stops until very late at night. I spend most of my day behind the counter, weighing out grains or looking for that one specific brand of tea someone wants. It’s a lot of lifting heavy sacks, and my back definitely feels it by the time we close up. We know most of the people who come in by their first names because they’ve been shopping here since I was a kid. It’s not like those big supermarkets where nobody talks to you. Here, we chat about the weather or how expensive onions have become this week. We don’t have a website or anything like that, we just open the shutters in the morning and wait for the milk delivery. It’s a simple life, and the store is a bit cramped, but it’s home. We just try to keep the shelves full so nobody has to go elsewhere for their daily staples.