FACES ON THE WALL
Each market shop has its guardian angels. So is the case with this one. Look at these two framed portraits nailed on the unnamed grain shop’s wall, along with that of gods. One is a painting, and the other is a photograph.
The former is of “swargiya Soorajbhan Goyal who founded the shop around 1951,” says Ravinder Gupta, a friendly person sitting behind the store’s counter on a wooden cot. A relative of the shop owner’s family, he is cheerfully presiding over the establishment this afternoon here in Gurugram’s Naya Bazaar. Kneeling over like a confidante, he confesses of never having personally interacted with the shop’s founder. “He was born in 1917 and died in 2002... I got connected to the family later through marriage.”
The person in the other frame is Rajkumar Goyal. “He was Soorajbhan’s son and died in 2017... passed away in his sleep, was only 62.” Mr Gupta recalls this gentleman with fond remembrances. “A very generous soul, never treated his customers as keval (just) customers.” Rajkumar Goyal, he says, would always engage with his clients, talk to them for long, remembering the details of their families, asking about their daily concerns and sharing his own with them. Gazing upon the portraits, Mr Gupta mutters that “these elders are always in front of our eyes, their memories alive in our hearts.”
Having these portraits in the shop, he reveals, assures the customers of the continuity of the shop’s traditions and inform the people new to the area that “we have been here for long and we are rooted to the ethos of the bazaar.”
Now a woman arrives (not the one in picture) and hesitatingly asks if she can get a couple of kgs of rice on credit “because I still haven’t got my salary.”
Mr Gupta gently hushes her to spare her further embarrassment, remarking that “nature of true wealth doesn’t lie in money.”
After she leaves , Mr Gupta turns again towards the portraits, saying, “We are thriving on the goodwill these elders created, but we are also trying to create our own goodwill… it is our duty.”