Documentary 'LONDISN16' Captures The Soul Of A South Asian Neighbourhood Store

Right beside my house in Pune, there is a grocery store that has been our local tuck store for the past 20 years. We’re out of lemons we need for breakfast? Just go to Vinayak. Need a late-night snack — aka Amul ice cream? Vinayak will 100% be open.

The best part of my day used to be walking to the store with my friends after our school bus dropped us back home, to get a packet of chips or a lollipop. The cherry on top was that we had a running tab, so I could just walk in there with all the swagger of a twelve-year-old and tell them, “Likh dena” (write it off).

Neighbourhood grocery stores in India are woven into the cultural fabric of the country. They are institutions, almost like historical monuments, witnessing the rise and fall of modernisation and the rapid urbanisation of society. And this applies to the people who run them even more so. Most Indian tuck stores are family businesses, passed down from one generation to another. When I was younger, my neighbourhood tuck store, Vinayak, was run by a larger-than-life, burly man who could be quite intimidating at times. Now, his son runs it, while he expands the business.

Documenting the lives of a South Asian family settled in England, 'LONDISN16' follows a family-run grocery store in East London that shares its name with the film. The film takes us through the everyday ups and downs of this British-Indian shopkeeping family, centring particularly on Anju, who has run the shop alongside her husband, Mayank, since the 1980s, after taking it over from his parents.

Over the past few years, Anju has found remarkable success selling homemade Gujarati food from the store, an endeavour born out of a long-held dream. The film traces the difficult journey she undertook to turn that dream into reality, while also following her as she sets out on a new venture: running a supper club in a local restaurant. Along the way, the film introduces us to multiple generations of her family behind the counter, quietly revealing how decades of life, labour, and legacy have shaped this family.

Speaking about the making of the film, Priyesh Patel, Anju and Mayank’s second son, says, “Although the shop has gained some public traction over the past few years, I couldn’t help but wonder why something so ordinary to me felt film-worthy to someone else. In the end, working with Huxley (Huxley Scott, the director) allowed me to see both the shop and my family in a new light. People rarely get to see the complex personalities behind a shop counter; even when you see the same faces regularly, interactions are often limited to small talk. Everyone has at least one good story, you just need the right person to draw it out.”

Londis N16 has been around since 1979, and the film captures themes of time and legacy, particularly in understanding what gets passed down within both the family and the neighbourhood. As Priyesh puts it, “Passing a shop down within a family isn’t always easy. It requires a lot of sacrifice, especially in a place like London, where the freedom to go and do whatever you want with your life feels deeply important to most people. I think all of us have struggled with the responsibility of that legacy at certain points, questioning whether it’s worth carrying on.”

But ultimately, it comes down to a simple truth: places like these become informal community anchors, building safe, healthy communities, often quite literally, because they are so well-fed, and as a social ecosystem, we are in desperate need of them. The film reminds us how much we stand to lose without them.

And in times like these, when, in India, instant delivery app workers went on strike on New Years’ Eve because they are expected to deliver grocery items in under ten minutes, navigating traffic jammed roads without fair pay or adequate compensation, it forces us to reckon with the cost of convenience. Much of this urgency is fuelled by our growing reluctance to step outside, to take the lift down, and walk a few minutes to our local grocery stores. In outsourcing even the smallest acts of daily life, we are not just distancing ourselves from neighbourhood economies, but also normalising a system that thrives on invisible labour. 

Perhaps that is what LONDISN16 ultimately asks us to reconsider: not just what we buy, but how and from whom. Whether it is Vinayak in Pune or Londis N16 in East London, these places display a sense of community and continuity no app can replicate. Walking into a local store is a small, almost mundane act, but it is also a choice, to participate in a community rather than bypass it. 

LONDISN16 was recently screened at the beloved Rio Cinema at Dalston and will hopefully be screened at multiple festivals across the world.

Follow the Londis N16 grocery store on Instagram here to learn more about Usha's incredible desi preparations and the studio behind the film, Machine98 for updates here.

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