Kesariya Mithaiwale

You can find Kesariya Mithaiwale inside the Jayganesh Vision building on Laxmi Road in Akurdi. It’s a pretty modern building, but our shop feels more traditional once you step inside. We have the usual glass counters filled with different types of barfi and halwa. We spend a lot of our time in the kitchen area stirring big pots of milk until it thickens up. It takes patience to get it right. My cousin and I run the place most days. We get a lot of people who work in the offices nearby stopping in to get a snack during their breaks. We keep a stack of cardboard boxes ready for the larger orders. The floor is tiled in a light color that shows every footprint, so we are always mopping. On festival days, it gets really chaotic and we have to bring in extra help just to handle the lines. But on regular Tuesdays or Wednesdays, it’s just a steady flow of people from the neighborhood. We don't do anything too complicated. We just make the sweets, put them in the display, and talk to the people who come in. Sometimes we sit on the stools behind the counter when it's quiet and watch the people walking through the mall. We’ve been here since this building was fairly new. It’s a good spot and we know most of the other shopkeepers around here. We try to keep the glass clean from fingerprints but it is a hard job with all the kids around.