Karunya General Stores

Our shop, Karunya General Stores, is sitting at 12C on Kodakara Road. It is a small place, but we pack a lot of things into the space we have. You have to walk carefully so you do not knock over the towers of soap or the buckets. We have been here on Kodakara Road for a while, and the floorboards creak in the same spot every time. We sell a bit of everything, from lentils to lightbulbs. It is mostly me and my wife running the counter. We do not have a fancy checkout system; we just know the prices by heart. If we forget, we look at the little stickers we put on everything. The windows get a bit grimy from the road traffic, but we try to clean them on Sundays. We do not have any big missions or goals, we just want to make sure the people around here can get what they need without going into the city. Some days the delivery truck is late and we have to tell people to come back tomorrow. They do not mind much. We have a small bench outside where the older men sit and talk. It is a quiet life, mostly. We just keep the shelves full and the lights on. It is a bit cramped, but it feels like home to us and the people who visit.