Navratri 2020 : Sweets sales drop, Sweet Shops await customers

Mumbai: All the sweet shops in Mumbai are ready for the Navratri festival. Like Ganeshotsava, Navratri festival is also being celebrated with COVID19 rules and guidelines. As a result, the number of customers in this year’s Navratri festival is less than every year. After Ganeshotsav, the number of corona patients has increased across the country.

This picture clears that the citizens are still distancing from outside food. Many devotees go to sweet shops every year to buy sweets for Navratri. With this in mind, the shopkeepers keep a variety of sweets like Pede, Laddu, Barfi, Modak and Jalebi in the sweet shops every year. There remains the crowd of customers outside the sweet shops almost for a week to purchase the sweets required for Naived and Prasad. But this year, the demand for sweets is low due to the corona crisis. Also the number of customers is low. All safety precautions have been taken in the sweet shops. Traders are somewhat disappointed with the decrease in the number of customers compared to every year.

Like Ganeshotsava, this year’s Navratri festival is also affected due to corona. Also the rules are the same as Ganeshotsava. Citizens are afraid of eating out even though they have started to get out of the house. ‘We have taken all the care of cleanliness and safety in our sweet shops. Even though the number of customers are less compared to last year. Many people are making sweets at home. Orders for sweets from many large circles as well as organizers have not yet arrived. Compared to every year, only 25 per cent business has been done in this year’s Navratri festival.’ – Riteish Jagwani, Satej Sweets, Chembur

‘Citizens show the major interest in sweets in festivals and celebrations. But since March this year, the business has suffered a lot. We hope that the number of customers buying sweets on Dussehra and Diwali will increase. In shops, we are strictly following all the rules of safety. We are giving priority to sanitizers, masks, face shields, and safe distance from each other.’ – Abhayraj Yadav, Krishna Mithai, Ghatkopar