Vikasji Sweet & Namkeens

Down in Tekri Mali Colony 4, you’ll find us at Vikasji Sweet & Namkeens. Our shop is at 1/A, right where the neighborhood starts to get busy. It’s not a huge place, just enough room for the frying vats and the display counters. We spend most of our time bagging up different kinds of namkeens. People around here like their snacks salty and crunchy, so we try to keep the bins filled. It gets pretty warm in the back where the cooking happens. We’ve got a routine down where one person mixes the dough and another handles the frying. It’s not a corporate setup by any means. There’s usually some empty crates stacked in the corner and the sound of the radio playing in the background. We know most of the people who walk through the door by their first names. They come in after work to get something for tea time. Sometimes we run out of the popular stuff early and have to tell people to come back tomorrow. It’s just a regular local business. We don’t have a website or anything like that; we just open the doors and get to work. The colony is quiet in the afternoons, which is when we do most of the heavy prep work. By the time the sun goes down, the shop is usually crowded with folks heading home to their families.