Billing for your grocery shop in West Bengal
Fifty grams of jeera, a litre of mustard oil and the month's slate of the para: all on your phone.
Why a Bengal mudi dokan is busiest with its smallest sales
A hundred small sales before noon
The para sends children with a slip and a ten-rupee note: fifty grams of jeera, a hundred grams of chire, a packet of salt, an egg. Each is weighed in a paper cone, and each has its own small rate. By noon you have made a hundred sales that are each too small to write down, and the notebook has caught only the ones on slate.
The slate of a neighbour who is also a relative
In a small para everyone is somebody's cousin. The slate runs from the first of the month, and when the month ends you cannot press a relative as you would a stranger. The amount is in the notebook on a page that is mixed with the oil and sugar of other houses. It is easier to wait than to ask, and the waiting is what drains the shop.
The weeks before Pujo and Bhai Phonta, when sugar, ghee and dry fruit leave together
Families make sweets at home, and they give boxes of dry fruit and ghee to relatives. Those goods move in a few weeks, and the shelf shows it only when it is empty. When the wholesaler's lane is crowded too, you cannot order what you should have asked for last week.
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From the loose chire to the son in Kolkata who pays his mother's slate, and the muri and gur of Poush Sankranti
A paper cone of chire, jeera and an egg for a child with a small note
A child comes with a small note for jeera, chire and an egg. Weigh each, enter the weights, and the bill works out the three amounts at their rates in the time it takes to fold the paper cone. The sack's count goes down by the grams that went into the cone, and the egg's by one.
A para family's old slate is cleared in parts from the city, and each part is a dated line
A son in another city sends money home in parts through the year, by UPI to your phone. Note each part on his mother's page with its day. The old slate becomes a list of dated payments with the amount still left, and she can ask in any month how much remains and be told from the page.
The muri and gur week of Poush Sankranti, counted on its own days
At Poush Sankranti families make muri laddoos and pithe at home, and the shop sells muri, gur, rice flour and coconut in one week. Keep each as an item with its own count and read the week's days apart. When next Poush comes you open those days and see which of the four ran out first, and you order that one early.
What a Bengal grocery counter asks of a phone
Credit book (khata)
A page for each house of the para with the month's slips on it, so a cousin's account is read out from the page and the awkward words are the page's.
Low stock warnings
The sugar, ghee and dry fruit that are about to run out before Pujo, seen on the phone while the wholesaler can still deliver.
Daily reports
The Poush Sankranti week kept on its own lines, so the muri, the gur and the rice flour are ordered this year from what actually went.
Women's groups that moved their shop's bills to a phone
Questions a Bengal grocery shop asks
A child brings one small note for an ice cream cone. How do I write that short bill?
Pick the items and the total shows on the screen. The change is the note less that total, said aloud once. The bill is a few taps, so the line behind the child does not wait, and the child does not go home without her cone.
A halwai takes tins of ghee and bags of sugar from me before Bhai Phonta and pays after. Where do I note it?
Open a page in his name and put each tin and bag on it with the day. After Bhai Phonta you read the page with him and note what he pays. His page stays apart from the houses that buy a packet at the counter.
Two houses share one tin of mustard oil and pay half each. Can one tin be on two pages?
Yes. Put the litres each house took on its own page. The tin's stock comes down by both, and each house reads its own half from its own page.
Murshidabad silk and the madur mats of Paschim Medinipur
Murshidabad is well known for excellent silk and is home to important silk weaving clusters making fine silk sarees, shirts and plain silk fabric.
Paschim Medinipur artisans make madur mats and mat products such as baskets and bags; madur is the district's One District One Product, with a GI tag.