The big retail shop vs. the shopkeeper

As we are settling in to a changed India, our shopping habits for groceries & household items have been making changes....they have been flip-flopping between the large supermarkets that are popping up wherever they find room and the good-old shop down the corner of every street....(well, for us in the next neighbourhood over as we live in quite a deserted place still). Living abroad we have gotten used to the neatness in a supermarket and also due to the fact that the markets (for vegetables) were quite far away. Here you find fresh vegetable shops & shops for other groceries & household items at almost every streetcorner in a residential area. But after numerous tries of going to them and the small shop we find the comfort of going to the small shop down the corner ever so comfortable.

The shop - you go to this shop that is packed with all sort of household & grocery item in every groove of the shop shelf, in wonder how they remember where everything is, and read off your list of things. You will be served along with two others in queue, simultaneously. Conversation between customers, and in the few free moments of the shopkeeper will also partake. Topics of inflation, the upcoming festival, politics, weather, traffic woes roam about freely. A bill then is computed on good old notepaper, calculator imprinted in the shopkeeper's head, and payment is made. You as the customer didn't have to move, they did all the moving and searching. The shops we have been to, have been ever so friendly and nice! The supermarkets just seem so impersonal. The staff there could care less if you shopped there or at another retail shop. I don't know why the craze for these supermarkets are, when one can just stand to get all the shopping done. It's a luxury & it's fun, something I will dearly miss when I leave Bangalore!

Protests over India Stores Closure