Billing for your toy shop in West Bengal
Hundreds of small prices, a stall at the fair and a gift paid for by a cousin far away, kept on your phone.
What a toy counter in Bengal asks of a phone
Low stock warnings
The last clay doll or the last carrom board, shown while there is still time to ask the maker or the wholesaler for more before Pujo.
Your own online shop
A page of the Pujo toys under their plain names, the same names you and an aunt on the phone both say, so the doll she means is the doll you set aside.
Daily reports
The four Pujo nights at the pandal gate on four lines, so next year's balloons and whistles are ordered from what actually went.
From the clay doll named for its village to the wooden pair counted as one gift
The small lots of the village makers, and whose order goes next
Clay dolls and terracotta horses come from different villages, and the makers bring them in small lots. Note each lot on the maker's page when it comes, with the day. When one village's doll runs low, you know whose order to place next, and the other village's lot is not asked for by mistake.
The pandal-gate stall, counted when the cloth is rolled up
Take the toys for the pandal gate as a count, and enter the sales as bills on the phone between the coins. When the cloth is rolled up at dawn you read what went and what came back in the bag, and the morning's count at the shop is made from it.
Wooden dolls sold in pairs, counted as pairs
The painted wooden dolls that village sellers carry come in pairs, and a pair is bought for a child as one gift. Make the pair the unit of the item, with its own rate and its own count in pairs. The bill shows how many pairs, and the count shows how many are left in the basket you carried to the fair.
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Why a Bengal toy seller counts the Pujo nights at the pandal gate, not in the shop
A balloon and toy stall at the pandal gate, four nights of coins
In the Pujo nights a toy seller sets up at the gate of a pandal with balloons, whistles, small cars and rubber balls. Children pull at their parents' hands, a hundred coins are put on the cloth, and the toys are sold in a minute each. At dawn you carry the cloth home and count the coins, and you cannot say which toys sold and which came back in the bag. A child has dropped a whistle in the crowd, another has changed a balloon for a ball, and the rate for the same toy is not what it was twenty minutes ago.
A grandfather asks the price of the window toy while the child changes his mind
A child picks a toy, puts it back, picks another, and the grandfather asks you to find the price of a toy he saw in the window. You say a rate from memory and are sometimes wrong, and the toy that sold last stays on the shelf in the notebook. The same rubber ball is sold in three sizes with three colours, and the notebook has a line for none of them.
The Pujo toy chosen by an aunt over the phone, described three ways
An aunt in another city rings to choose a toy for her nephew. She describes it by its colour, by its size and by the name the boy gives it, and you guess which toy on the shelf she means. The nephew's father comes for it, and nobody has a line that says which toy it was or that it was the one she chose.
Questions a Bengal toy shop asks
At the pandal gate a child drops his whistle, and I change his balloon for a ball. What do I write?
Put the balloon back on the count, take the broken whistle off it, and bill the ball as a sale. At dawn the bag agrees with the count, and the whistle that broke is not a toy that went missing.
A buyer asks which doll is the Krishnanagar one and which comes from Natungram. Where do I show it?
In the item's name, with the place first and the toy after it, such as Krishnanagar clay doll and Natungram wooden owlet pair. The bill the buyer holds shows the place, and she can say it again to her family.
I carry a basket of owlet pairs to a village fair where few buyers come. How do I count the basket that comes home?
Count the pairs you take as a place of their own before you go, and bill each sale there. When you come home, the pairs left are the pairs in the basket, and a quiet fair is a number and not a feeling.
The grandfather only asked a rate, and the child has pointed at three toys. When do I start the bill?
When the child picks one. Read each rate by the toy's name as asked, and enter only the toy he holds. The other two stay on the shelf with their counts as they were.
The clay dolls of Krishnanagar and the wooden owlets of Natungram
The Clay Doll of Krishnanagar, made by the Ghurni artisans' cooperative in Nadia, is a registered Geographical Indication; the application was filed on 15 November 2021.
At village fairs in southern West Bengal, sellers carry baskets of colourful wooden dolls, especially pairs of owlets, made at Natungram in Burdwan, though few buyers remain.