Billing for your grocery shop in Delhi
A hundred grams of dal and a whole month's ration go on the same phone, each at its own rate.
From the extra packet at the door to the ration paid for on the first
The extra packet asked for at the door is added to the same bill
A customer of the colony has reached the door and says, one more packet of tea. You add it to the bill that is already made, and the family gets one bill with the true total instead of two slips. The same goes for the bill you have started and the customer behind it is already waiting.
Write it down, said the woman from the fourth floor, and the page is already open
In the evening rush, with the queue at the door, pick her family's page and make the bill while you pack her bread and milk. The credit sits on the flat's page with its date before the next person steps up, and tomorrow the page is read without anyone going through a pocket.
The oil that went up in the third week, and the bill that kept the rate of its day
Change the oil's rate in your items when the wholesaler's rate moves in the lane. The flat's earlier bills on its page keep the rate they were made at, and the later ones carry the new one. When the salary comes on the first and you send the page on WhatsApp, the family can see the week the oil went up, and nobody asks which bill was wrong.
Tools for a counter where the stock is poured, weighed and counted
Bills on your phone
Loose rice, the one-kilo packet and the five-kilo bag are rung up at their own three prices on one bill, so the bag that is cheaper by the kilo is never sold at the packet's price.
Credit book (khata)
One page for the four men who share a room and settle together on the weekly wage day, with every credit bill dated.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the sachets and hundred-gram lots that leave every day for the workers' lane, so they are ordered before the shelf is bare, while the bigger bags can wait.
Orders to suppliers
The order for the wholesale lanes sent from your phone with the warnings in front of you, and what came in noted against it.
Daily reports
Kilos of atta and litres of oil sold each day, kept day by day, so you can see which week of the month the bags go fastest.
Why the slips of a Delhi grocery's evening rush are sorted at ten, and the rice has three prices
The pile of slips from the evening rush, sorted at ten at night
People coming home from work stop for milk, bread and eggs, and for two hours the line is out of the door. A few of them say write it down. You note it on a slip between two sales, and at ten at night you sit with the pile trying to remember which flat took the bread and whose slip is the one that is torn.
A hundred grams for the worker, a month's ration for the flat
Around a Delhi grocery counter two kinds of customers stand side by side. One takes a hundred grams of dal or a single sachet, every day, because a small amount is what the day's pay allows. The other family comes once with a list that fills two bags. You write the first sale in your head and the second on a slip, and neither is added to anything.
The same rice at three prices on one shelf
Rice and atta sit on your shelf three ways: loose from the sack, in a one-kilo packet and in a five-kilo bag. Each has its own price, and the bag is cheaper by the kilo than the packet. When the sack runs out nobody can say whether the shelf is short of rice or only of one size of it.
Women's groups whose handmade-food stall moved off paper
Questions Delhi grocery owners ask about the drum, the wage day and the loose bag
The workers' lane buys hundred-gram sachets every evening. How many sachets should I have ready for tomorrow?
Count the sachets by the piece. The lane buys them when money is thin, in the last days before the wage, and fewer once it is paid. So stock the most sachets in the days before pay, and set out the bigger bags for the week after it, when the flats come.
The five-kilo bags ran out in the first week last month. Why does the big bag go in the first week?
Because the wage comes at the start of the month and the flats buy the month's atta in one go. Have the bags in before the wage, not after it, and set the sachets for the month's end.
One of the four painters in the room leaves before the wage day. What happens to the room's page?
The page stays open in the name of the man who pays the rent. Read the bills dated before the leaver went to the three who remain, and let them settle his share between them.
Khari Baoli, the lane that fills the grocery shelves
Khari Baoli, Asia's largest wholesale spice market in Delhi's walled city, gets long-distance trucks at set hours on the Chandni Chowk edge, and handcarts move goods through five-foot lanes. A grocery shop that buys its spices and pulses there fits its orders to those hours, and what the handcart brings is noted against the order.
Cardamom from Kerala, saffron from Kashmir and cumin from Gujarat reach Khari Baoli's lanes, then spread across northern India. The cumin in a jar on your shelf may have begun in a Gujarat field, and the cardamom on a Kerala hill, before the lane passed them to you.