Pappaiyawala Provision Stores

Pappaiyawala Provision Stores is our little place on Haripura Main Road. We are situated in Agano Vad, right across from the Haripura Bhavanivad. This area of Surat has a lot of history and the streets are quite narrow. We have been here for a long time, selling basic provisions to the families who live nearby. The shop is narrow and deep, filled with jars of pickles, bags of lentils, and different kinds of soaps. It smells like spices and old paper inside. We don’t use any fancy marketing tricks. We just put the items on the shelves and wait for people to come in. Most of our morning is spent weighing out things for customers who still buy in small quantities. It's a manual process and takes some time. Sometimes the electricity goes out and we have to use a flashlight to find the sugar or the salt. No one complains because everyone around here is used to it. We aren't trying to be the biggest store in Surat. We are just happy to be the place where people stop on their way home to grab what they forgot earlier. It’s a lot of work keeping track of everything, and our backs often ache by the end of the day. But the store is our livelihood and we just keep at it, day after day, in the middle of Haripura.