Annu Store

Annu Store is a small spot tucked into the Visheshwarganj area, specifically on Jalpa Devi Road in Varanasi. It’s near the Kabir Chaura intersection, which stays busy with rickshaws and people walking by at all hours. We sell a bit of everything that a household might run out of unexpectedly. We have milk in the mornings, bread, eggs, and all kinds of spices and dried goods. The shop is quite small, so things are piled up pretty high. You have to ask us for what you want because it is hard for customers to browse through the narrow space. We know the price of every item by heart and don't really use a computer for the billing, just a pen and a notebook. It works fine for us. The neighbors in Machodari know us well, and we often have people stopping by just to say hello while they wait for their groceries to be bagged. There is always noise from the street outside, and the shop can get quite warm in the afternoons, but we have a small fan that keeps us going. We aren't trying to be the biggest store in Varanasi; we just want to be reliable for the people living on this street. It’s a lot of hard work, especially lugging the heavy sacks of flour, but it’s what we do. We open up the shutters every day at dawn and close them long after dark.