Reema General Store

Reema General Store is located in Mawaiya, right on the Main Road near the Purna RTO Office in Sarnath. This part of Varanasi has its own rhythm, and we’re right in the middle of it. The market here stays active throughout the day. We get a lot of people who are heading to the RTO or just locals doing their daily shopping. Our shelves are packed with all sorts of things, from plastic buckets to small packets of biscuits. Sometimes it’s hard to find exactly what a customer wants right away because we have so much tucked into corners, but we usually get there. The morning starts with us sweeping the front and getting the new stock inside before it gets too hot. It’s a lot of manual work, honestly. We don't have any fancy computer systems; we mostly just remember where everything is. The fans hum all day long and we listen to the radio or just talk to the neighbors. It’s a simple life running a shop like this. We see the same faces every week, people coming in to chat as much as to buy things. The rain sometimes leaks a little near the back door if it’s heavy, but we’ve learned to move the stock out of the way. It’s just how things are at a local general store in a busy market like this one. We keep the doors open and just take it one customer at a time.