Hukamchand Bholanath

Our family has been at 86, Moti Bazar for a long time. Being in Chandni Chowk, you can imagine how crowded it gets. It’s a historic part of Delhi, and we are right in the middle of it. Hukamchand Bholanath is the name on the board, and we’ve kept it that way through the generations. The shop is narrow and tall, like most places in Moti Bazar. We sell goods that have been staples in this market forever. You have to navigate through narrow lanes and dodge rickshaws to get to us, but that’s just the charm of the area, I guess. We don’t have air conditioning that works very well, so we mostly rely on the old ceiling fans. The walls are lined with boxes and ledgers. We still do a lot of things by hand, the way my father and grandfather did. It’s noisy outside, but inside we just focus on the customers. Some people have been buying from us for thirty years. We don't have a website or anything like that. We just open the shutters in the morning and wait for the day to start. It’s a simple life. We drink a lot of tea while we work. The market is our home, and we know almost every other shopkeeper on this block. It’s a bit chaotic, but it’s our version of normal. We just take things as they come.