In retrospect, it’s the most obvious economic thing that happens everywhere. Where people work, a slew of businesses setup shop and an ecosystem of livelihood builds in the vicinity, supported just by the working class people. Food shops, of all other types, are the first to come up and thrive.
My attention to this was drawn not by the food shops of course. Living as it is in the midst of a huge cluster of hostels for working men and women, I found many tailoring shops in the area. That is when I realized how an entire ecosystem of businesses emerges out of almost nothing in and around places where people work and have not much time (or inclination) to do certain things that an older generation would be self-reliant about. Things like cooking and sewing.
Tailoring shops tell another tale. It’s a stereotype but an honest one at that. In our country, women have historically spent more time on dresses and fixing them (or tweaking them, perhaps) compared to men. Sure, the tailoring shop workers are often men but the customers mostly are women. In a swarm of nests for men, a tailoring shop would’ve been a sinking business but since this place is a cluster of hostels for both men and women (albeit separately), tailoring shops win.