Billing for your stationery and book shop in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
A teacher's list of forty notebooks and forty pens, billed in one go before the bell rings.
Tools for a counter of pens by the dozen and paper by the ream
Bills on your phone
A sheet of chart paper, a pen and a glue stick billed in three taps in the last minutes before the shutter comes down.
Credit book (khata)
A school on a smaller island that takes its term's supplies on credit and clears them when the grant comes has a page of its own, each carton dated as it left.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the chart paper and the glue sticks when the count falls, before the weeks when every class has a project.
The reopening week, the exam week and the textbook that is not on the shelf
A quiet day is the day to count the paper the damp has touched
In the weeks between the rushes the shop is slow and there is time to count. Use a quiet day to count each ream and each exercise book against the phone, starting with the paper the damp reaches first. The June order is then made from what you hold, not from what you remember.
A short list is told to the mother before she pays, not at the ferry
A mother comes off the ferry with the school's list: two guides, six notebooks, a geometry box. The guide is not on your shelf, and the count on your phone says so before you start. She hears it first, then chooses: take the rest now, or wait for the guide on the next boat.
The grant arrives, and the order that follows is no surprise
A school's grant comes in one lump, and the order after it is large. The school's page shows what it took and what is still unpaid, so you can tell the headmaster the figure before he writes the order, and you know whether the new list is already on your shelf or needs a fresh crossing.
A school list paid for in coconut
A notebook on a school list has travelled further than the child who buys it.
- Port Blair has the Haddo, Wharf and Chatham harbours for ships to the mainland, about 1,190 km from Chennai and 1,255 km from Kolkata. A ream of paper is one of the loads that cross that sea.
- Trade in copra, dried coconut kernel, has long been the mainstay of the Nicobar islands, which depended almost entirely on copra exports for outside goods (2010 report). For a Nicobar family a school list was, in a sense, paid for in coconut.
Forty notebooks for one class and nobody to check the count
Closing time at a one-person island shop
At closing there is a line at the door and the shutter is half down. You are the only one at the counter, so you cut, count and add for each person in turn. The coins go into the cash box and none is written down. By the time you pull the shutter the day's count is a guess.
Two rushes a year and a long quiet between them
The shop is full when school reopens and full again before the exams, and almost empty in the weeks between. The order you place for the rush has to be right the first time, because a second one has to cross the sea, and a pen that sells by the hundred in one week does not move in the next. The weeks between are when you can count, if you have a count.
Paper that takes up the damp
A ream left in a corner of the shelf through the wet weeks comes out soft at the edges. Notebooks and charts go the same way if they sit. You cannot always tell which stock has been sitting, and the customer who opens a bad ream is the one who remembers. A bad ream is returned by the customer after the ferry has gone, and you cannot swap it that day.
Questions island stationery shops ask in the reopening week
The depot gives the school its textbooks free. Which goods should I keep a close count of?
The notebooks, pens, guides and geometry boxes. Each is its own item with a count, and the low-stock warning follows the ones that sell fastest in the first weeks of the term.
A boatman brings the teacher's list a day before the teacher comes. Can I have the bill ready?
Yes. Make the bill from the list the day it arrives, and keep it until the teacher comes. He checks the lines at the counter, and the cartons are packed by the time his boat is ready.
A ream sat through the wet weeks and swelled at the edges. Do I sell it with the good reams?
Make the damp ream its own item with its own lower rate, apart from the dry reams. The dry count stays true, and the damp one sells on its own line.
A school asks for the same list each June. Can I keep what it took last time in front of me?
Open the school's page. Last June's bill is there with its date, so this June's list is picked beside it.
Textbooks for the distant island schools
In 2015 a party leader said Class IX to XII students struggled to get CBSE and NCERT textbooks; Port Blair has a few private bookshops but distant island schools have hardly any. A bookshop in Port Blair is the nearest one for many students on other islands.
The Government Book Depot in Port Blair distributes CBSE and NCERT textbooks free of cost to all schools in the islands. A private shop's trade lies in the notebooks, the guides and everything else the school list asks for.