Chota Dukaan is a piece i've worked on for the last couple of weeks during the art classes i take at home. Its from a series of photographs that i took years ago while traveling somewhere in Karnataka.
Chota Dukaan means small store. This is the typical, local, tiny, hole-in-wall, cigarette shop that grows into the tiny, hole-in-the-wall, treat shop. It has biscuits, chips, sweets, tons of hanging shampoo/oil/soap/food/mouth-freshener sachets, water, perhaps a small icebox, basic home cleaning material, cigarettes and perhaps some juice tetra packs. The shopkeeper gets inside via a secret flap in the back or from the front folding panel etc. Its a cosy little space that he sits in all day long. These stores open early and close late. They are the street-side-water-cooler-hang-out for street side vendors, elderly folks with nothing to do all day, chatty duos, etc. Such stores usually have a mask/object that wards off evil. Look for the little red and black mask in this painting.
