Billing and udhaar for every shop in Sikkim
A shop up the lane, a store by the road and a house behind: one phone for the bill, the stock and the udhaar.
Mangan cardamom and the farm country of North Sikkim
Every district in Sikkim trades in its own way. The north lives off its fields, and a shop there hears about the harvest from the people who come in to buy.
- North Sikkim depends mainly on farming, and Mangan grows the larger variety of cardamom, popularly called the Cardamom Capital of the world.
Where a Sikkim counter loses count: two floors of stock, a market day against a quiet one, the house and the shop in one pocket
The shelf upstairs and the store at the road, two stocks in one head
The owner of a Gangtok shop keeps his rice, oil and biscuits in a rented room by the road, because the truck cannot climb the lane. When the shelf looks thin he carries a sack up and writes nothing down. On the day a slide shuts the highway and no truck comes, he cannot say how long the room will last. He knows only that it held a lot a week ago.
A market day fills the lanes and a Tuesday leaves them empty
Gangtok's Sunday is a different town from its Tuesday. The lanes round Lal Bazaar fill with families, and the shop sells far more in that one day than it does on a Tuesday. The owner orders for the Sunday, and by Tuesday the cartons stand where he put them. Nobody has written down what the Sunday took, so each week's order begins with a guess. Whether the extra biscuits and tea were needed, or the extra soap, he cannot say.
The house and the shop share one pocket
A family that lives behind or above its shop takes tea, sugar and soap off the shelf for the kitchen, and a nephew takes a notebook for school. None of it is a sale, and none of it is written. At the end of the month the shop looks poorer than the bills say, and nobody can tell why. It is not dishonesty. It is a pocket with two names on it.
Stock counted by floor, market days read against quiet ones, and the house kept off the shop's page
The shop and the store counted as two places
Keep the room by the road and the shop up the lane as two places on one phone. In the rains every trip down the slippery lane costs a quarter of an hour, so the phone tells the boy which carton to bring on this trip: the one the shelf is short of and the room has.
The hours the lane buys on market Sunday
Every bill has its time as well as its date. Open the market Sunday and you see the hours the lane bought in, and the hours it did not. The Tuesday after has no such hours. The carrying up the lane is then done before the buying hours and not in the middle of them.
The house above the shop, and the nephew's school notebook
When the family lives above the shop, the tea and sugar for the kitchen come off the same shelf as the shop's stock. Put what goes upstairs on a page in the family's name, as a bill, and the shop's sales stay the shop's. What the nephew takes for his school notebook is a line there too, and nobody is made to feel watched.
What helps a shop on a hill lane with a store by the road
Godown stock
The cartons that came up on the last truck, counted into the store by the road, and what has gone up the steps to the shelf since, as two places with every move noted. When a slide holds the trucks on the highway, you can read what the store has left.
The whole shop in one place
Products, stock, suppliers and orders together on one phone, so the owner who climbs the lane all day looks in one place. A new helper learns the shop from the same screen.
Many shops, one owner
A shop in the lane and a small counter kept for the guests of the family's homestay, billed as two shops under one account. The guests' biscuits, soap and bottled water come off the homestay counter's stock and never the shop's.
Daily reports
Any day's sales can be opened, so the Sunday before Losar sits beside the Sunday after it. You see which goods the festival moved and which stayed on the shelf, before you order for next year's.
What shop owners in Sikkim ask before they start
The trucks stop at the road and the shop is up the slope. How can I tell from the counter how many days the rice in the room will last?
Read the room's count of rice, then read the daily report for a few days to see how much the shop sells in a day. Set the sacks in the room against that daily pace, and you know how many days the rice will last.
On a Sunday, which goods go first from the room at the road to the shelf upstairs?
Open last Sunday's sales. The items that left the shelf first on the market morning are the ones to carry up before the next market opens, and the room at the road keeps the slow ones.
The cook of a homestay buys rice and cooking oil from me every week and I want to give him a lower rate. Where do I write it?
Change the rate on his bill when you make it, for his rice and his oil. He comes every week, so make the same bill each week, and the lower figure is on his WhatsApp each time.
Gangtok's market lanes: Lal Bazaar and MG Marg
Lal Bazaar in Gangtok sells fresh fruit, organic vegetables, cheese including chhurpi, and bamboo and cane baskets, and is liveliest on Sundays.
MG Marg in Gangtok is a one-kilometre vehicle-free shopping street, popular for Sikkimese handicrafts, prayer wheels and flags, with food stalls and cafes.