Sixty-year-old S. Masthan is living proof of communal harmony. He also offers the hope that with hard work and perseverance, one can bust the barriers to success in business.

Mr. Masthan is the proprietor of Raja Seeval Store, the most-sought after shop in Velachery for Hindu religious items, for more than three decades.

Masthan, a native of Tirunelveli, recounts the story behind setting up his shop near the Yoga Narasimhar temple on Velachery Main Road, in 1980.

“The locality had a large Brahmin population in those days and they had to travel a long way to Mambalam or Triplicane, to purchase the materials needed for poojas and other rituals, at a time when transportation facilities were poor, if not non existent,” says Mr. Masthan.

That’s when he decided to set up a shop that supplies pooja materials, and it remains there to this date.

Well-versed in the Hindu calendar and festivities, Masthan, who never misses ‘namaaz’ on Fridays, need only be informed of the nature of festivities or religious rites. From the well-stocked shelves of his narrow shop, he gets all the materials ready for his clients.

He notes with pride that most of the Hindu priests in the locality send devotees to his shop to purchase required items.

A number of shops selling religious articles have come up in the area since, but devotees continue to patronise Mr. Masthan’s shop.

Today, he sells the Tamil almanac, the ‘pambu panchangam’, and has also set up branches in various places in the city — Perungalathur, Medavakkam, Urapakkam, Nanganallur, and Keelkattalai.

He has also convinced his five children, including three daughters, to take up the trade.

Mr. Masthan, who cycled several kilometres in his younger days to source the materials demanded by his clients, has a flourishing trade today, but retains the simplicity with which he started out.

He never forgets to greet a regular customer, and treats every new customer equally well.

source::::Srikanth .R. in THE HINDU

Natarajan