Billing for your hardware and paint shop in West Bengal
The Pujo repaint, the tarpaulin before the storm and the mistri's five sites, kept on your phone.
From the Pujo repaint to the fish pond that needs a pump, pipes and a net
Which size the painters carry up the scaffold in Pujo week
Keep the paint by the litre and the bucket as two items, each with its own rate and count. In the Pujo weeks you see which size sold faster. A painter who takes four litres and one bucket gets one bill, and the bucket he carries up the scaffold is the one you order deeper before the next Pujo.
A fish pond set up from one counter: pump, pipes, net and rope
A man digging a fish pond needs a pump to fill it on the first day, lengths of pipe, a net and rope, and each comes from a different shelf. Put them on one bill, and the owner reads the whole cost of setting up the pond in one list, and knows what he has spent before the first fish goes in.
The pre-monsoon roof job, billed as one list of five things
A roof in Bengal must be made watertight before the rains: a waterproofing compound, a brush, a roll of sheet, nails and a ladder rope. The mistri orders them in the dry weeks, a few days before the first rain, so the job is not started with the sky already dark. One bill carries all five lines.
Factory and farm districts that buy from a Bengal hardware shop
A Bengal hardware shop sells to factories and farms alike.
- Purba Barddhaman is the only West Bengal district its own people call strong in both industry and agriculture, so a shop there sells to factory builders and farmers.
- Dhaniakhali in Hooghly has a large number of potato cold storages, big buildings that were built from cement, bars and paint.
What a counter of paint, tin sheets and pipes asks of a phone
Low stock warnings
The tarpaulin and the tin sheets that will not last a nor'wester, seen as running low in March and not on the morning after the storm.
Orders to suppliers
An order to the paint distributor before Pujo, made from last year's bills, with a note of what came in so the colours on the shelf match the ones ordered.
Daily reports
Each day of the Pujo repaint kept on its own line, so next year's order for paint is made from last year's weeks.
Why a Bengal hardware shop sells more paint in the weeks before Pujo and more tarpaulin before the nor'wester
The weeks before Pujo, when every wall in the para is painted
Houses, shops and pandal sheds are all painted before Pujo. Painters come in for a bucket of paint, a brush and a roller, and the customer wants the same blue as last year's. The painters work on bamboo scaffolds and need more of a tin before noon, and the shop is out of the tin by then. The notebook has a litre or two not billed in every hour, because the painters ask for a little more in the same tin and the shop pours it out of habit.
The nor'wester that comes in an hour and takes the roof
In the hot weeks before the rains the storms arrive in the evening and the tin roofs of the village houses lift. The next morning a line of customers asks for tarpaulin, tin sheets, nails and rope, and they all want it before the next storm. The wholesaler's van has not come, and you cannot say how many sheets are in the back. The roads are blocked by a fallen tree, and a family with a wet child on the floor stands at your door.
The mistri's five sites, one slip each
A mistri takes cement for one site at nine and paint for another at four, a slip for each in his shirt pocket. By evening the slips are creased, damp from the first drops of the nor'wester, and the one for the second site is gone. When its owner asks for the bill, you have a line in the notebook and no slip to agree with it.
Questions a Bengal hardware and paint shop asks
A painter pours a litre or two from the bucket into his own can, and the bucket is short at night. How do I show it?
Bill the litres he pours as a sale of the litre item, and take that litre off the bucket's count at once. The bucket's count then agrees with the bucket, and the litres a painter takes are a number on his page and not a loss found at night.
The first rain finds one item missing from the roof job, and the owner says I did not send it. How do I answer?
Open the bill for that job. It lists the sheets, the screws and everything else that was sent, with the day. If the item is on the bill it left the shop, and if it is not, it was never sent, and the argument ends at the page.
The wholesaler's van is late because a tree has fallen on the road. What do I tell those waiting for tin sheets?
Tell each what the yard holds, from the phone. Sell what you have by the foot, so a torn corner gets a short length and a whole sheet is not cut for it.
The mistri lost the slip for his second site. How do I answer the owner who asks for that site's bill?
The mistri works two sites, but only one owner pays you. Open the page for the site that owner is paying and read its lines alone. The other site's lines stay on their own page until its owner pays.
Navratri paint launch and a mural in Kolkata
Shyam Steel launched Macaw Paints in West Bengal on the first day of Navratri 2025, timed with Durga Puja, calling Bengal its launchpad for its cultural significance.
In 2018, Kansai Nerolac said its dealers across West Bengal donated a minimum of one litre of paint each towards a Durga Puja mural in Kolkata.