Gayatri Mava Bhandar

Our place is over at Bhadbhuja Ghati in Chokhala Bazar, house number 84. It’s one of those narrow streets where the smell of sweets and fresh milk always hangs in the air. We start very early, usually while it’s still dark outside, to get the mava ready. You have to keep stirring the milk for a long time or it burns, and then the whole batch is ruined. It’s hot work standing over those large iron pans all morning. People from the nearby sweet shops come by daily to pick up what they need. We don't have fancy packaging or anything; we just weigh it out and wrap it up. Sometimes the market gets so packed with shoppers that it’s hard for the milk delivery to even reach our door. We’ve been sitting in this same spot for years, and not much has changed inside the shop. The walls could probably use a fresh coat of paint, but we're too busy with the milk to worry about that. My younger brother handles the accounts, though it’s mostly just jotting things down in a rough notebook. We don't try to be anything we aren't. We just make the mava and sell it to whoever walks in. It’s a busy life in Chokhala Bazar, but it’s what we know and we just keep doing it day after day.