Meanwhile, in his little Kerala...

The pandemic-era life in a specialised grocery

from the rope, just the way they are put up in roadside shacks throughout Kerala.

The supply of these ingredients was briefly affected in the early days of the lockdown “and I couldn’t keep all stuff available at all time for my long-time customers.” Eventually, the goods trains started moving, Mr Nair says, and his shop was back to running smoothly on the tracks. As soon as he would get the stock replenished from Kerala, the gentleman would inform his customers, many of them fellow Malayalis, on Whatsapp. They would message him back with their shopping list and he would get the packages ready before summoning them to the grocery. “That way, nobody had to wait and gather in my shop and increase the risk of spreading the infection.”

Now Mr Nair excuses himself—a customer has just turned up. He sells to him a good quantity of kappa, or tapioca, which he describes as “Kerala ki arbi.”

Mr Nair speaks fluent Hindi. He has been living in the Delhi region since 1985 and initially resided in west Delhi’s Janakpuri “which is home to a lot many people from our Kerala.” A retired X-ray technician in a hospital, he opened the shop in 2011 and operates it all by himself. His wife is a technician in a veterinary lab and his daughter, a school teacher, is currently working from home. These days, Mr Nair feels that life is again becoming “normal for everyone.” He shuts down his store by 7pm (it was 9pm in the pre-corona era) and heads home on his scooty. Today, though, he will reach a bit later because “I’m delivering a stock of ponni chawal to a friend whose house falls on the way.” He, however, insists he doesn’t do home-delivery, fearing that on reading this dispatch, his customers might start badgering him into delivering stuff to their home, too.

Later, on reaching his house, Mr Nair is photographed through the phone screen that connects him to this reporter. His wife and daughter are too shy to appear in front of the camera. Anyhow, soon enough the family sits down to dinner. Tonight’s menu: red rice, aviyal, mambazha pulissery (mango curry!), neembu achar and uzhunnu pappad. All these dishes are cooked with Kerala spices— sourced from Mr Nair’s shop, naturally.