Occupation: Manages a Milma booth
Although I run this Milma booth at Althara junction, it is not mine. It is owned by Pushpan, a relative. However, I have been managing it for the last 10 years.
I wake up daily at 5 am and reach the booth at around 5.30 am to open the stall. Vijayan, one of my co-workers, sleeps here. As it is a Milma booth and milk is an essential commodity, there are no holidays. We are open till 10.45 pm every day, 365 days of the year. The only time we close our shop is when there is a hartal. We have never seen any hartal-related violence in this part of town, but we don’t want to take a risk. If it is a dawn-to-dusk strike, we open the shop after 6 pm.
As with all the other booths, Milma’s milk in packets sells the most. We get hundreds of milk packets every day and all of it gets sold out by night. There has never been an occasion when we had to return packets. Other major Milma products we sell include ghee, curd, peda and flavoured milk. All the products sell well. But we don’t stock the popular Milma sip-ups, as our cooling facility is not capable of keeping it frozen for a day. Much of our revenue comes from Milma’s commission.
We run a teashop too. Tea and coffee are available around the clock. We also sell snacks such as Uzhunnu vada, Parippu vada, Banana fritters and Unniyappam, apart from cold drinks, biscuits, fried chips and slices of cake.
Apart from edible items, we sell several other things you can find in a petty shop.
Busy space
We are busy most of the time as there is always a crowd around Manaveeyam Veedhi. This is the only shop on the entire stretch. Sundays and any other day of festivity on this cultural corridor, are the busiest days for us. However, we don’t make any effort to prepare for those days. We sell whatever we usually do.
Most of our customers are from around here. There are many who have been regular customers for years.
Employees of the adjacent Kerala Water Authority and Police Headquarters all come here for tea and some eats. We get many young customers too.
It’s become a place to hangout for them as there is plenty of seating available on the paved sidewalk. As we are one of the few shops that are open till late at night, we get a good crowd of night-owls too, again mostly youngsters. We run the shop in shifts. There are usually four of us here during day time. From evening till closing time, it will be Vijayan and one other guy. I go home by 6.30 pm, usually. I live with my family at Thamalam. My wife, Pushpalatha, is a homemaker. I have two sons, Aneesh and Ajith. Aneesh has finished his class 12 and is looking for a job related to computers.
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