Ramdev Sweets

Our shop, Ramdev Sweets, sits right on Chinchwad Main Road in Laxmi Apartment. We are at Shop No 4, which is quite close to Talera Hospital. Because of the hospital nearby, we see a lot of people coming in at all hours, sometimes looking for a quick snack or a box of something to take to a friend. We start our work very early, long before the sun is up, because the milk and the ingredients arrive in the dark. The kitchen in the back is always hot and smells like sugar and ghee. We make our sweets in small batches so they don't sit around for too long. Our display counter is usually full of different colors, and we spend a lot of time wiping the glass because fingerprints get everywhere. The Talera Hospital Road is always busy with ambulances and people rushing about, so our shop is a bit of a landing spot for folks needing a break. We have a few benches, but mostly people just stand and eat. It’s a family-run kind of thing, and my cousins and I are usually the ones behind the counter. We don’t use any fancy machines; most of what we do is by hand, the way we learned years ago. It’s hard work and the floor is often sticky by the afternoon, but we enjoy seeing the same faces every morning.