Billing and udhaar for every shop in Manipur
A stall in the Ima Keithel lanes or a counter in a hill town: the bill and the udhaar move from the notebook to your phone.
Thoubal sugarcane, Bishnupur oranges and Moreh trade: the shops of Manipur by district
Every district in Manipur trades in its own way. Here are a few, and what they are known for.
- Thoubal is Manipur's largest sugarcane producer, and Khangabok is famed for kouna (tule) handicrafts such as mats, stools, chairs and hand bags.
- Bishnupur is known for stoneware, and its district headquarters is popular for hill-grown oranges, yongchak (tree-bean) and vegetables.
- In Ukhrul, cultivators are 64.6% of main workers (2011 Census), agricultural labourers 4.4% and household-industry workers 2.5%.
- Moreh, the international trade centre of Manipur, lies at the southern end of Chandel, a border district with Myanmar.
From the Ningol Chakouba list to the lorry that finally unloads
The host's shopping list, ready at the counter before the guests arrive
The host of a Ningol Chakouba feast has rice by the sack, fish, vegetables and sweets to buy for his sisters' families. While they sit down to the meal, you set the stock aside and pack from his list, and make the bill when he comes. Nobody stands at your counter waiting.
A hill family's page that outlives your memory of it
When your son or your sister takes the counter for a day, hand over the phone and not a notebook. Whoever stands there can read the figures of every hill family that comes down, so the family is met with its own numbers and the day goes on without a call to you.
Two lorries in one day, and the order for the item that came twice stopped
A long road sometimes brings two lorries within a day, and then the shop holds more salt or oil than it has room for. The count tells you which item came twice, so you stop the next order for it, and on the third day you know which items are still thin.
Where a Manipur counter loses count: hill dues, one cash box and late lorries
Hill customers who settle when the paddy is in
Families from the hill villages come to town on market days, take what the house needs for the month and say they will pay when the paddy is in. You trust them, and you should. But asking for the figure feels like doubting them, so you ask for less than is due, and the paddy comes in on a day nobody can name beforehand.
The hour when the stall belongs to a cousin
When you step away for the bank or the school, a cousin minds the stall, and a customer asks for a shawl in a colour she cannot find. She does not know if you have one in the back, so she says no. The shawl that went while you were away is written nowhere, and you learn the shelf is one short only when a regular asks for that colour.
A lorry that comes a long way and arrives late
Salt, oil, cloth and tools reach Manipur by long road routes from outside the state. When a lorry is late, the shelf empties before the next order is even sent, and when two arrive together there is more than the shop can hold. The room is full of one thing and bare of another, and the money sits in the boxes that came twice.
What helps a shop in Imphal or the hills through the paddy weeks and the feast weeks
Many shops, one owner
A cloth stall in the Ima Keithel lanes and a room at home that holds the festival stock: two shops under one account, each with its own count.
Online orders
The Ningol Chakouba list a host house sends a week ahead, with rice, fish, sweets and a gift for each guest, reaches your phone as an order with every quantity.
Credit book (khata)
On the day the hill family comes down, its page is read aloud to it, each take with its day, and the family nods or corrects a line before the one payment is written.
What shop owners in Manipur ask before they start
A son working in another state pays for his mother's stall goods by UPI. Can his payment go on her page?
Yes. Write his payment on his mother's page with its day, whoever sent it. The page then shows what the stall has taken and what has been paid.
The host's list has rice and fish for the feast and a gift for each of his sisters' families. How do I keep the gifts apart from the feast goods?
Make each gift its own item, so the list reads as feast goods and gifts on separate lines. The bill names both, and the count of the gifts goes down apart from the rice and fish.
My stall sells shawls in the cold weeks and sweets at Yaoshang. Can one account show both seasons?
Yes. Every item you sell, in any season, sits in the same account, and the daily report keeps each day. Open the cold weeks and the Yaoshang days and read what each season sold.
The Ima Keithel stalls, the Senapati terraces and the Imphal East workshops
Ima Keithel is an all-women market with about 3,000 'Imas' running stalls: vegetables, fruits, fish and groceries on one side, handlooms and household tools on the other.
In Senapati, agriculture is the main occupation, with terrace farming of paddy, maize, cabbage and potato; 80% of the area is forest. A shop there serves families whose money comes with the crop, not with the week.
Imphal East has 45,346 business establishments, of which 14,061 do handicrafts or handloom work (Economic Census 2013); wool-knitting, cane, bamboo and pottery are also common. Many of these businesses sell what they make from the same room or stall.