Venkataratnam Kirana & General Stores

Venkataratnam Kirana & General Stores is located over in Dondaparthy, right near where the Old State Bank of India used to be in the TSN Colony area of Visakhapatnam. Being at Door No 43-9-177 means we see a lot of the local foot traffic every single day. The shop itself is a modest space, filled with the typical smells of a general store—turmeric, dried chilies, and laundry soap. We’ve got the usual setup with wooden counters and shelves that go all the way up. Often, the coastal humidity makes everything feel a bit heavy, but we keep the fans going and stay on our feet. People come in looking for specific things, maybe a certain kind of rice or some matches, and we do our best to find it in the stacks. It’s a bit of a maze sometimes with all the new boxes arriving. We spend a lot of our time talking to the folks from the neighborhood about the weather or the local news while we pack their bags. There’s no rush here, even when it’s busy. We just take one customer at a time and make sure they get what they came for. It’s been this way for a long time, and the building has seen a lot of changes in the Dondaparthy area, but inside the shop, things stay pretty much the same. We just keep the shelves full and the door open for whoever stops by.