Billing and udhaar for every shop in Meghalaya
A hill road, a weekly market and a neighbour who pays later: keep all three in one place on your phone.
Ri Bhoi's cane and bamboo, and the jackfruit of South Garo Hills
Meghalaya's districts earn their living in different ways, and a shop on any corner feels it in who walks in.
- In Ri Bhoi, most families in the Umling block live by cultivation. Byrnihat has an industrial estate, and bamboo and cane work is a local craft.
- At Rongara in South Garo Hills, a jackfruit processing unit opened in February 2024. It can process over 700 tonnes a year, and the state says about 8,000 farmers will earn more from it.
Ten customers called Lyngdoh, a church feast on credit, and a stock room in the house
Ten customers called Lyngdoh
Clan names are shared by many families in Meghalaya, so a notebook that says Lyngdoh, Syiem, Marak or Sangma can mean ten different houses. You know which one it is because you know the faces, but your helper does not, and neither does the cousin who minds the shop on Sunday. A line written under the wrong Marak makes someone pay for another family's rice.
A church feast and a village dorbar order at once
When the church has a feast or the village council meets, the order is large and sudden: rice, oil, dal, plates, tea leaf. The committee pays after the event, often in one sum, and the shopping was done by three different people on three days. The slips are in three pockets, and the treasurer asks for one total.
Half the stock lives in the house
A great many shops here are the front room of a home, with the stock in the room behind. Two or three women of the family take turns at the counter. When the shop is also your home, relatives drop in after church on Sunday, and the shelf you counted on Saturday is not the shelf you have on Monday.
A page that tells the Marak families apart, and a Christmas week with a list for each house
Each Marak house on a page of its own
Open the page with the first name and the village or lane, such as Marak, Rongkhon, or Lyngdoh, Mawkynrew, and every bill after that goes to the right house. Your helper searches by the first name and sees one page, and no family pays for another's sugar.
A feast that ends as one page for the committee
Give the church committee or the dorbar a page. Whoever comes to the shop for the feast, the bills are added there with their dates. The treasurer gets one total on WhatsApp, and the three people who shopped on three days do not have to remember what each took. Whoever minds the shop on a Sunday afternoon reads the same page you read on Saturday.
The Wangala and Christmas weeks, with a list for each house
Before Wangala in the Garo Hills and before Christmas, families buy for many days at once. Write each family's order as one bill, send it on WhatsApp to the person who will collect it, and put whatever is unpaid on that family's page. The shop stays open late and nobody is working from a slip of paper.
What a Meghalaya shop can do with its phone before Wangala and Christmas
Godown stock
A separate count for the raised store house behind the family home, with each sack carried to the front shelf noted on the way.
Many shops, one owner
The shop in Tura and the stall your sister keeps near the church, both visible from one account.
Online orders
A Garo Hills family sends its list for Wangala week from the shop's own online page, and you pack it for the shared taxi that goes that way. Each stall keeps its own stock and its own day's sales, and neither is lost in the other.
What Meghalaya shop owners ask before they start
Two houses share both the first name and the village. What tells their pages apart?
Add one more thing both of you know, the elder's name or the lane, after the village. The helper who searches the first name then sees two pages and chooses by that last word.
Next year a new treasurer takes over the committee. Can he read last year's feast page?
Yes. Last year's page stays with its bills and their dates, so the new treasurer opens it, reads what the feast took, and plans this year's order from it.
A relative from the Garo Hills comes down by shared taxi on market day to settle her bills. Can I show her the page there?
Yes. Open her page at the counter and read it with her line by line, then add her payment. She leaves with the page at nil and has no reason to come back for it.
Bara Bazaar, Garo jewellers and Lakadong turmeric
In Shillong, Bara Bazaar (Iewduh) has shops for traditional Khasi materials and household items, and Police Bazaar sells Meghalaya merchandise, regional apparel and handicrafts.
West Garo Hills' district site lists local makers of tribal-design jewellery and accessories, including Seven Cherri, which employs local tribal women, and Amis Jewellery in Tura.
In West Jaintia Hills about 70% of people depend on agriculture. Potato, ginger, garlic and turmeric are key cash crops, and the district is home to Lakadong turmeric.