Indian Grocery Stores Producing Culture and Nostalgia in The Indian Diaspora

Indian grocery stores have expanded across the Canada as the South Asian diaspora has grown here over the years. Catering to the wider South Asian population, Indian grocery stores produce culture away from the homeland. These stores invoke nostalgia over a place once visited or lived, and provide a place of familiarity for some, through the environment and the products sold, that create a deep connection our evoke memories.

Indian grocers sell a variety of products, not limited to food items. South Asians living outside of Indian shopping hubs in Canada often drive out to them specifically to buy the things they cannot find elsewhere. 

Customers can take comfort in seeing the same products they cooked with back home. Shoppers find it easier to communicate with employees and even strike up conversations with other customers, creating a social space for the community that is designed just for them. 

Commodities sold in these stores bring back memories, and these stories can be told to their children, bridging a connection to the homeland. 

Many Indians say they feel nostalgic while shopping because they can get the same products found back home. 

 

“They have Maggie noodles and Desi oil for making pakoras.”
They also say that many of the brands he bought in Punjab, he can find here and the brand and the taste are “100% the same.”

The main products sold in Indian grocery stores are vegetables and spices. For many, food is a way to connect to their roots, and reproduce and pass down culture.

While many diaspora kids don't participate in the cooking or have yet to perfect the round roti, we definitely love to consume the food, so these stores would be the first place we would go to purchase what we need to round out our spice cupboard. 

Indian grocery stores are nostalgic for diaspora kids in a way that differs from their parents, but still shows the production of culture, that is then passed on through one's lineage.
This nostalgia is over childhood - for me, items like the small mango kulfis are a reminder of Indian stores, my childhood, and by extension Indian culture. 

The memories Indian grocery stores bring up for diaspora kids may be limited to short trips back to India or visits to the stores themselves, but they are still part of the consumption and production of Indian culture, and this is seen the way we fondly look to these stores as a place of comfort.

Indian grocery stores provide customers with products they can use to retain Indian culture in their households, in both big and small ways. For immigrant parents, it provides comfort knowing that they can pass down culture, even outside their homeland.

The nostalgia from brands and the social environment of the stores gives them comfort because it's a sense of home. It's familiar names, faces, smells, and sounds. It's a way of maintaining their cultural identity.

Calgary Wholesale Cash & Carry is an Indian Grocery Store in Calgary, Alberta.  You can buy Indian grocery in retail or wholesale at reasonable prices.

Contact: +1-403-861-2000,  +1-587-777-5410