Gopal Pattal Bhandar

If you know Dhanmandi Teej Ka Chowk, you know how crowded it gets during the wedding season. That’s where we are, right in the middle of all that chaos at Gopal Pattal Bhandar. We spend our days stacking up leaf plates and bowls. The smell of the dried leaves is always there in the shop. It’s not a fancy business. There are piles of stock reaching up to the ceiling sometimes, and we have to move things around just to find a place to sit. When the festivals come, the street outside is so packed that we can barely get the delivery rickshaws to the door. We don't really do much else besides counting bundles and making sure the stacks don't fall over. It gets dusty, and the floor is usually covered in bits of string or plastic wrap. We know the neighbors well because we've been at this spot for years. Someone might stop by just to chat for a minute before moving on to the next shop in the market. We don't have a computer or anything like that. We use a simple notebook to keep track of what goes out. It’s a basic way to live, but it works for us. The lights in the chowk flicker sometimes in the evening, and that’s usually when we start thinking about locking up. It’s just how things go here at our little place in Dhanmandi Teej Ka Chowk.