Paul Traders

If you head down Hattola Road in our village, you’ll find Paul Traders. We are right near the Shib Mandir, so it’s easy to spot us even if you’re new to the area. Purulia can get very hot, so the shop is a bit of a shaded spot for us. We deal with all sorts of items that people around here need for their daily work. It’s not a fancy place at all. The walls are just plain, and we have bags and boxes stacked up on the floor. My father started this business, and now I handle most of the day-to-day things. We talk to the farmers and the local families every day. It’s more about the conversation than just selling things. Sometimes we run out of stuff because the trucks take a while to get here from the main city. We just tell people to come back in a couple of days. That’s how things work in this part of Purulia. The Shib Mandir brings a lot of people by on festival days, and those are our busiest times. We have to sweep the dust out every morning because the road is quite dry. It’s a lot of work keeping everything in order, but it keeps us busy. We don’t have a website or anything, just this physical shop where we’ve always been. We just take it one day at a time and try to keep enough stock on hand.