Located amongst the 22 churi walas was this
tiny shop yet the largest in comparison to other shops. The man who owned this
shop was Nabhir Ahmed, a soft spoken, 65year old man of great knowledge and
experience. Ahmed ji’s shop has been running since the last 4 generations and
currently is under the name of his father in law. ‘Babu Churi Wala’ shop is
very beautiful and visually appealing and is full of vibrant bangles with a
huge variety ranging from glass bangles to plastic ones from metal ones in all
colours and sizes with all kinds of designs, sequences and stones for infants,
fashion conscious teenagers to newlyweds and elegant ones for the elderly
people.
Earlier the market around the hanuman
mandir was known to be the largest market reason being the foot fall was very
high but in recent times it’s the opposite.
The shop opens every day from 11am to 9pm
though earlier the shop used to be running even at 5am as many people would
visit the Hanuman mandir for early morning prayers. The shops been in business
ever since the mandir was built but back then the shop would only be open on
Tuesdays since that day is auspicious for hanuman ji and there would be a
‘Patri Bazaar’ wherein people would sell their stuff either on carts or by spreading a cloth and displaying
their stock (no permanent structures). But ever since the government has taken
over this area, they allotted a place for Mabeer ji to set up his shop
(permanent structures).
The infrastructure of the shop consists of
iron frames which contains of iron rods which are detachable and used to
display his bangles. The seating arrangement consists of 2 wooden benches for
customers for customers to sit outside the shop and one low rise wooden stool
for Mabeer ji to sit on. The shop also consists of a wooden bench inside the
shop which acts as a small storage unit. The shop consists of a radio that
plays hindi songs all day which transports us into the old era. Also the shop
has a balance of bulbs and tube lights that brings the best in the bangles.
One very unique thing I came across was
that all the churi walas in that area were related to someone or the other and
hence, called themselves a family. There was a lot of proximity and
cohesiveness among them all. There were no signs of competition or jealously.
-Sanya
Dear Sanya,
ReplyDeletePlenty of potential in this post. For starters you could complement it with pictures of Nabhir Ahmed, the shop and its location. Please run a spell and grammar check before posting. The post has minor spelling and grammatical errors which do not do it much service in terms of elegance.
I particularly like the last paragraph. I think parts of the description in there are well done and I am able to visualise the way the shop looks. For instance where you describe the furniture or mention the radio. I would re-frame the sentence about the bulbs and lights to describe how the light plays off the bangles and the glint it creates or the shimmer that seems to emanate from the shop as a whole.
warmly
Chris